Damn Interesting

Two Eggs – Hold the Sperm

One of the favorite topics of speculative fiction is a society composed entirely of women. From the Greek legends of the Amazons, to the modern novels of Sheri Tepper and Joanna Russ, we have asked ourselves a series of questions. What would such a society look like? How would its members behave? And most importantly – how would they reproduce?

The answers to the question of reproduction have been as varied as the speculated societies. Most involve men in some form or another – whether captured and enslaved, or merely kept out of the society except for reproduction. Only a few have gone so far as to remove the men – because then the question of how women reproduce on their own comes into play.

Parthenogenesis – the production of offspring from an unfertilized egg – is a frequent contender, but parthenogenesis is unheard of in mammals. Also, it’s a form of asexual reproduction with all the disadvantages that entails. Trying to preserve a form of sexual reproduction with only one sex seems a little odd, but to preserve the genetic variety of the species, it would be necessary. Using two eggs rather than an egg and a sperm would seem a logical solution, but that scenario is never found in nature, and all attempts to produce offspring this way, in any animal, have failed – producing embryos which died early in gestation, if they even survived that long.

At least until recently. Then came Tomohiro Kono, a biologist at the Tokyo University of Agriculture. He and his team of researchers set out to produce a mouse from two eggs. In 2004, he succeeded, producing a mouse named Kaguya, that not only lived to be born, but grew to adulthood, and produced offspring of her own in the more usual manner.

Blastocyst and Unfertilized Ovum

The first necessary part of producing a mouse without sperm was to figure out why the embryos produced so far were not viable. The answer turned out to be in the genes. In a process called imprinting, some genes in a gamete are turned off, while others are turned on. Which genes these are differs in eggs and in sperm, so the zygote created from the combination has a complete, non-duplicated set of active genes. With two eggs, some genes would be turned on in both, while others would be turned off, leaving the egg with no active copy of a potentially vital gene. To try to avoid this problem, the researchers started working with immature eggs taken from newborn mice. These eggs would not have their genetic imprinting yet, and so might substitute for sperm.

The first attempt met with improvement, but not success. The new batch of embryos survived longer than any of the previous batch – more than halfway through gestation. Nonetheless, all the new embryos died before birth. The longer survival was promising though, so Kono and his team began to concentrate on making the genes of the immature egg more sperm-like. They found two genes. One, called IGF2, is required for proper growth in the fetus, and is only active in the sperm. The other, H19, is active in eggs, and aids in deactivating IGF2 in the egg. By removing H19 from the immature eggs, the researchers enabled the IGF2 to activate, as it would in a sperm cell.

Based on results, the researchers believe that activating that one gene may have caused a cascade of gene activations and inactivations throughout the immature egg, causing it to emulate the gene patterning of a sperm cell much more closely than the one manipulation could account for. With paternal imprinting in place, the team could then try again to produce embryos.

Kaguya

Even with the genetically modified eggs, producing a live, healthy mouse proved to be an immense task. Kono and his colleagues produced 457 fertilized eggs, using their modified ova. Of those, 371 survived to the blastocyst stage – far enough along to be implanted in a female mouse. From those 371 pregnancies came 10 live births, and from those ten live births – one mouse, who lived to adulthood and had babies of her own.

That mouse, Kaguya, is the first, and so far only mammal to be born by combining two eggs. After her debut in the April 2004 issue of Nature, the researchers announced that they would be attempting to create a baby pig via the same method, but nothing has been published as of yet. Given the difficulties of producing Kaguya, this hardly seems surprising. It would seem that we are slowly making progress on understanding the complex biology of reproduction. It would also seem that men are going to be a necessary part of the process for some time to come.

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It is perhaps interesting that it is a man that is working to make sexual reproduction obsolete. I can see the headline now, “Bored with the repetativeness of sexual reproduction, Tokyo scientist moves on to the more intellectually stimulating asexual reproduction.”

:-\

just_dave

Posted 31 May 2006 at 08:27 am

Truly interesting that it’s a man heading up this research. Gotta be a damn interesting story behind that! Kinda reminds me of the goofball scientist in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength who wanted to eliminate all organic life because that was where all the icky stuff in nature came from.

Speaking as a man, I say just fuggedaboutit. There is a lot to be said about doing things the old fashioned way.

tobobo

Posted 31 May 2006 at 08:30 am

“It would also seem that men are going to be a necessary part of the process for some time to come.”

Yeah, unless a woman steps up to the plate and figures it out before a man does.

Shandooga

Posted 31 May 2006 at 08:53 am

If ‘evolution’ could accidentally produce all the lifeforms we see in the world (whilst having no existence of its own, mind you), any amount of intelligence should be able to reproduce every living thing with ease. Just saying, is all.

wruneblade

Posted 31 May 2006 at 08:54 am

1st post for me here! I have been reading the site for a while, and now seemed like a decent time to put in my two cents.

I read somewhere (forgive me for not providing a link, I forget where) that men make actually be obsolete in the next few million years. This is due to that fact that we (men) have a Y chromosome. It is slowly but surely accumulating defects and mutations that will in millions of years supposedly kill us (men). Women do not have the same problem because they have two X chromosomes, and are therefore able to “fix” the defects because they have two “copies.” So, if in a few million years we (humans) want to still be around; they might want to figure out how to procreate with two eggs… that does leave all the fun out of it though.

doctor_toc

Posted 31 May 2006 at 09:09 am

Fascinating. I had an argument with my high school biology teacher in the early 80’s that this kind of reproduction would be possible, which she vociferously denied. Take that Mrs. Campbell!

S Mirza

Posted 31 May 2006 at 09:13 am

just_dave said: “Speaking as a man, I say just fuggedaboutit. There is a lot to be said about doing things the old fashioned way.”

I agree. But can you imagine the amount of legislation they had to bypass?

That’s just…weird. I have to assume something wondrous would come of the research to modify an immature mouse egg to make it “sperm like.” Given the current viable status of the Y chromosome, maybe they’re hedging bets because they feel there’s some truth to the whole Exit Mundi thing. In the end, I think science begets science, the path of discovery is inevitable, and SOMEONE had to make an egg-egg offspring, right?

For my part, I will stalwartly and steadfastly remain on duty. It is a man’s job, responsibility, and right to make sperm, and it is a job NO man should take lightly. Why, just this past minute as I wrote this a punched out a few thousand or so, and intend to make many, many more before the day is out, faltering Y chromosomes be damned.

Manufacture is as far as I go on this site. Disbursement of my product is something I’ll keep to myself – probably to everyone’s relief.

Vivendi

Posted 31 May 2006 at 11:38 am

Damn Interesting. But we men have nothing to worry about, not yet anyways. Again, intertesting that it’s a guy leading this research.

Exit Mundi looks like a lot of $$$% to me, I mean you can’t compare what’s happening to some butterflies and extrapolate that to humans. Here’s why: Butterflies DO NOT have X and Y sex chromosome system like in mammals, they have Z-W sex chromosomes, where the females are ZW and males are ZZ, opposite of humans.

Heh in a few million years, IF we survive that long (good luck), people will be replaced by more effective working counter-parts, in other words people will slowly replace their bodies for robotic parts prolonging life to extremes, hell even nanotech can help fix our aging process if and when it matures.

All this is under the ignorant view that we survive from our own thrist for self-annihilation. ;)

AGG

Posted 31 May 2006 at 02:04 pm

Since the Y chromisome is located only in the sperm, not in the egg, any offspring produced by a combination of two eggs would invariably be born female. This is a scary thing we may be getting ourselves into-personally, I like having guys around. My dad is incredible and my husband is fantastic, not to mention that most of my friends growing up were boys. I just think it’s interesting that if two females were to reproduce, they would create another female every time.

junebee

Posted 31 May 2006 at 03:25 pm

The feminazis will love this! They’ve been trying to get rid of men for the last 30 years!

Quality Queen

Posted 31 May 2006 at 04:08 pm

Another Viewpoint calls this the “immaculate conception,” perhaps in jest, but let’s talk about it for a sec. The true immaculate conception is not explained away simply because scientists have figured out how to eliminate men from the equation. Why they would want to do this I have no idea, because the whole process is a lot more fun with men involved. But just for the sake of argument and amusement, using this method, Mary would only have been able to concieve a girl. Right? So we still can’t discount the whole miracle thing.

andrew

Posted 31 May 2006 at 05:01 pm

While Japan works on a high tech method for producing only females, China has been using a low tech method for producing only males for decades.

Now seems like a good time for Japan to own up to their responsibility for the events at Nanking in 1938.

andrew

Posted 31 May 2006 at 05:03 pm

@Quality Queen:

I’m sorry, did you say “true immaculate conception”?

I think you’ve been watching too much television.

joethecoat

Posted 31 May 2006 at 05:24 pm

Actually, it was immaculate CONTRAception. Intentional or not, that is a fantastic phrase… I would have thought greater variety going into a gene, as in XY rather than XX, would reduce the chances of genetic screwups. Like the way we tend to be attracted to people with a different immune system set up, because it will give the children the widest possible defence.

bryon

Posted 31 May 2006 at 05:27 pm

@Quality Queen:

“Another Viewpoint” said immaculate contraception.

Asshe

Posted 31 May 2006 at 06:14 pm

schuylercat, I loved your comment!! A bit of wit goes a long way.

An interesting medical phenomena was brought to mind when I read this article: Dermoid cysts.
They’re gross and are often present at a (female) child’s birth. I think the best way to put it is that when the ovaries of a female develop while it is still a foetus, some of the eggs (usually a pair, one in each ovary) goes nuts and starts to develop on its own. When they get taken out, they usually contain things like hair, teeth etc.

Perhaps it’s the female body trying to tell us to leave the males out of the whole process… haha.

wh44

Posted 31 May 2006 at 07:42 pm

Shandooga said: “If ‘evolution’ could accidentally produce all the lifeforms we see in the world (whilst having no existence of its own, mind you), any amount of intelligence should be able to reproduce every living thing with ease. Just saying, is all.”

Evolution, which provably exists at the micro level and has %&$!-loads of proof at the macro level, had hundreds of millions of years, at least, to produce this variety. Please don’t try to provoke a flame war.

hal

Posted 31 May 2006 at 09:23 pm

wh44 said: “Evolution, which provably exists at the micro level and has %&$!-loads of proof at the macro level, had hundreds of millions of years, at least, to produce this variety. Please don’t try to provoke a flame war.”

what proof is there that evolution exists?

distinctx

Posted 31 May 2006 at 11:52 pm

This article is an interesting read.
I’ve been doing some research, trying to connect religion and this topic. What I found out is quite interesting. It is stated that for Muslims, who believe in the ‘end of the world’. There will be signs (big and small) indicating the end is coming. One of them is that the number of females will dramatically outnumber males. It’s interesting to see how old prophecies and modern science can seem to be interconnected. Still trying to look at other religions though.
Anyone else interested in this line of thought?

Ethics, religion and fun aside; this is a rather huge leap for the scientific community.

Reilly

Posted 01 June 2006 at 01:29 am

The proof for micro evolution is beyond reproach. Even creationists who actually follow what is going on are generally in agreement of micro evolution, for example did you know that, due to poaching, elephants tusks in the wild have significantly shortened in the last century. This is only a blip on the evolutionary timescale. Multiply this out by a couple of billion years and have a look what you can come up with

donlaudanny

Posted 01 June 2006 at 01:39 am

wruneblade said: “1st post for me here! I have been reading the site for a while, and now seemed like a decent time to put in my two cents.

I read somewhere (forgive me for not providing a link, I forget where) that men make actually be obsolete in the next few million years. This is due to that fact that we (men) have a Y chromosome. It is slowly but surely accumulating defects and mutations that will in millions of years supposedly kill us (men). Women do not have the same problem because they have two X chromosomes, and are therefore able to “fix” the defects because they have two “copies.” So, if in a few million years we (humans) want to still be around; they might want to figure out how to procreate with two eggs… that does leave all the fun out of it though.”

The Y chromosome has ways of fixing its own genetic errors by refolding over itself. And it’s not really the Y chromosome that makes a man a man, it’s the SrY gene on the Y-chromosome. All the genes needed to make a woman into a man are already present elsewhere, it just acts as a switch. It could conceivably move elsewhere or another system could arise to take its place. Sexual reproduction is necessary to maintain any sort of complex living organism. Read the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins to get an idea of why.

junebee said: “The feminazis will love this! They’ve been trying to get rid of men for the last 30 years!”

Haha. The feminists are screwed regardless. What they really hate is the fact that beautiful women are regarded as higher than them, and they see men as the perpetuator of this. Nope. Women are hardwired by millions of years of evolution to establish a pecking order based on looks. Beautiful women get more respect (or hate) from other women even in an all women setting. Take men out of the picture, and the fugly feminazis will still be treated badly.

If they really want to feel better, they should go eat right, exercise, learn to put on makeup, and get some surgery.

Furnace

Posted 01 June 2006 at 03:51 am

Reilly said: “The proof for micro evolution is beyond reproach. …for example did you know that, due to poaching, elephants tusks in the wild have significantly shortened in the last century. “

Don’t confuse evolution with natural selection. Hunters steadily removing all the elephants with large tusks is logicially going to eventually leave only elephants with small tusks. They didn’t just “decide” to start growing smaller tusks to survive. Even then, there’s nothing natural about it… just another influence of man.

JustAnotherName

Posted 01 June 2006 at 04:09 am

I wonder if this is going to be found a fake like the Scientist that claimed to have produced a clone via SCET? I am not saying this scientist didn’t do it, but some will go to extraordinary efforts to claim the EUREKA without really doing so…..and end up on magazine covers with greatly detailed articles.

I made note of SCET in my journal and then had to add a footnote of sorts when SCET success was found to be a failure.

wh44

Posted 01 June 2006 at 04:36 am

Furnace said: “Don’t confuse evolution with natural selection. Hunters steadily removing all the elephants with large tusks is logicially going to eventually leave only elephants with small tusks. They didn’t just “decide” to start growing smaller tusks to survive. Even then, there’s nothing natural about it… just another influence of man.”

Excuse me, but what is evolution, if not natural selection?!

Any theory can only be proved by applying repeatable conditions, such as manmade “evolutionary pressure”. There have been any number of experiments using drosophilia, fruit flies with a really short life-span, including one done by a classmate of mine in high school. This isn’t rocket science.

If you do not accept manmade pressures as equivalent to natural pressures in terms of testing evolution as a theory, then what would you accept as proof? What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) natural selection / evolution?

1c3d0g

Posted 01 June 2006 at 05:01 am

Great…so lesbians will rule the planet after us guys are gone? :-( Well, we better get moving and reproduce the normal way A.S.A.P.!

Pazza

Posted 01 June 2006 at 05:14 am

Just imagine, a whole planet full of lesbians. Awesome.

Vivendi

Posted 01 June 2006 at 05:45 am

Only that there will be no men around to say “look a whole planet full of lesbians. Awesome”

Reilly

Posted 01 June 2006 at 05:51 am

wh44 is exactly right. Evolution is not about individuals deciding to evolve. Whatever works best in a given situation will get more chances to reproduce and pass on its traits.

P.S. Woo lesbians!

hal

Posted 01 June 2006 at 06:22 am

Reilly said: “wh44 is exactly right. Evolution is not about individuals deciding to evolve. Whatever works best in a given situation will get more chances to reproduce and pass on its traits.

P.S. Woo lesbians!”

that is natural selection. not evolution.

wh44 said: “Excuse me, but what is evolution, if not natural selection?!

Any theory can only be proved by applying repeatable conditions, such as manmade “evolutionary pressure”. There have been any number of experiments using drosophilia, fruit flies with a really short life-span, including one done by a classmate of mine in high school. This isn’t rocket science.

If you do not accept manmade pressures as equivalent to natural pressures in terms of testing evolution as a theory, then what would you accept as proof? What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) natural selection / evolution?”

natural selection does not equal evolution.

Reilly said: “The proof for micro evolution is beyond reproach. Even creationists who actually follow what is going on are generally in agreement of micro evolution, for example did you know that, due to poaching, elephants tusks in the wild have significantly shortened in the last century. This is only a blip on the evolutionary timescale. Multiply this out by a couple of billion years and have a look what you can come up with”

again, there is a difference between evolution and natural selection. Furnace clears things up a bit:

Furnace said: “Don’t confuse evolution with natural selection. Hunters steadily removing all the elephants with large tusks is logicially going to eventually leave only elephants with small tusks. They didn’t just “decide” to start growing smaller tusks to survive. Even then, there’s nothing natural about it… just another influence of man.”

Furnace is on the right track here, the elephants did not evolve smaller tusks, the selective pressures merely selected against the larger tusked individuals. the elephant population would have contained a variety of tusk shapes and sizes, the larger ones however, have been selected against, leaving the smaller tusks ones to remain and reproduce.

p.s. thank you to alan bellow for registering this bugmenot username.

cheers

alan heckman

Posted 01 June 2006 at 09:26 am

Ok, i can feel this conversation diverting…

Hal: You are obviously trying hard, but I still don’t get it. As far as I know, the two things you keep saying are different are merely different aspects of the same thing. My understanding of the theory of evolution is that all it says is that when a naturally occuring mutation happens and turns out to be beneficial, natural selection is likely make the mutation widespread after several generations, either wiping out the old phenotype or just creating two phenotypes that live side by side… So guess Evolution and Natural selection aren’t strictly speaking the same thing, but Evolution logically must occur, given random mutations and natural selection and a very long time. Surely you aren’t arguing that mutations don’t occur? That seems like it has been pretty well demonstrated.

Let me know where you are coming from.

Shandooga

Posted 01 June 2006 at 09:52 am

wh44 said: “Evolution, which provably exists at the micro level and has %&$!-loads of proof at the macro level, had hundreds of millions of years, at least, to produce this variety. Please don’t try to provoke a flame war.”

Since you say that evolution “probably” exists, I find that it is, therefore, a perfectly acceptable explanation for the *probable* existence of aliens, Leprechauns and unicorns. I’m going to hold on to the *actual* explanation for the existence of *real* biological entities…however undesirable you may find it. Flame on! :-)

Shandooga

Posted 01 June 2006 at 09:54 am

Pazza said: “Just imagine, a whole planet full of lesbians. Awesome.”

Just who would take out the garbage, then?

superdude4agze

Posted 01 June 2006 at 12:29 pm

If you want proof of evolution then just look to the caves… there are hundred if not thousands of species of insects and animals that have chosen caves as their dwellings of choice. By doing so they have evolved and have gained new attributes to use within a pitch black cave atmosphere. They are technically the same species as the wilderness wandering examples but no longer have pigments to their bodies, are blind, and have increased senses of smell, touch, and hearing. That is evolution.

superdude4agze

Posted 01 June 2006 at 12:37 pm

You cannot discount the pressures applied by man as a cause of evolution. Just because we hunted the large tusked elephants does not mean that they did not evolve and just grow shorter tusks. It means that they evolved because of the pressures from a species that was hunting them. Like tree frogs. At one time they tasted good to birds then some of them developed bright colors and poisonous skin to keep themselves from getting eaten and so on and so forth. also read this http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

just_dave

Posted 01 June 2006 at 02:48 pm

Wow; damn interesting turn this conversation has taken! Seems that there are more opponents to evolutionary ideas than proponents.

Excuse me, but what is evolution, if not natural selection?!

Any theory can only be proved by applying repeatable conditions, such as manmade “evolutionary pressure”. There have been any number of experiments using drosophilia, fruit flies with a really short life-span, including one done by a classmate of mine in high school. This isn’t rocket science.

If you do not accept manmade pressures as equivalent to natural pressures in terms of testing evolution as a theory, then what would you accept as proof? What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) natural selection / evolution?”

The examples of science experiments on fruit flies and elephant tusk length are closer to the process of selective breeding, which is a far cry from what evolutionists claim happened to produce the biological diversity we see today. Evolution supposedly involves one species changing through a series of mutations to become a totally different species. That is something that has yet to be proven, but is for some reason accepted as fact. The question I would leave for the evolutionists here is, if evolution has continued to produce increasingly advanced organisms on the planet, then why are humans the only species that has achieved sentience? And why are there still simple organisms after billions of years of evolution?

As for a standard of proof that evolution is fact, this guy has a pretty decent offer on the table, and a process by which any offered “proof” can be evaluated.

Hayley

Posted 01 June 2006 at 03:46 pm

Furnace said: “Don’t confuse evolution with natural selection. Hunters steadily removing all the elephants with large tusks is logicially going to eventually leave only elephants with small tusks. They didn’t just “decide” to start growing smaller tusks to survive. Even then, there’s nothing natural about it… just another influence of man.”

Actually, the point of this study was that female elephants are starting to prefer males with smaller tusks, as opposed to the larger-tusked elephants which were the traditional preference.

This article makes me wonder, though, if it is possible to do the same thing with two sperm cells. I’m not sure when in their development they become sperm cells, but if they start out as full cells and get some genes turned off, would this not be possible? I don’t know enough biology to know if this is feasible, but it would be an interesting concept as well, no?

And about the evolution flame war: neither side will ever convince the other. Much of it transcends logic to blind faith, on both sides.

Bolens

Posted 01 June 2006 at 04:53 pm

Hayley said: And about the evolution flame war: neither side will ever convince the other. Much of it transcends logic to blind faith, on both sides.”

I agree. Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Faith is important to all of us, whatever we believe in. And about those blind fish, etc in caves… could it be that they are only found there because, being too vulnerable in sunlight environs, they were simply eaten by the next tier in the food chain? As for me, I prefer not to put all my faith “eggs” in the evolution basket. hehe.

Crispy

Posted 01 June 2006 at 08:43 pm

just_dave said: “[…] The question I would leave for the evolutionists here is, if evolution has continued to produce increasingly advanced organisms on the planet, then why are humans the only species that has achieved sentience? And why are there still simple organisms after billions of years of evolution?

That’s a common misconception – evolution does NOT necessarily produce more “advanced” organisms, just ones that are more adapted to the environment. Humans are not perfect. Sentience is helpful in many ways, but it can also be a problem – the more intelligent a creature is, the more likely that it’s able to become, say, depressed. Last time I checked, being manic depressive wasn’t a survival trait. :-)

Also, just because some members of a species evolve into another species, that doesn’t mean that the original species is extinct. Bacteria and algae survive very well in their ecological niches. It’s when they start spreading out of those niches that natural selection starts favouring different sets of genes and mutations, creating new species; however, that doesn’t cause the other members of the old species to suddenly die out.

Whole species don’t suddenly evolve into new ones; members of them do.

Finally, I take issue with your implied assertion that humans are the only sentient beings on the planet. What about chimpanzees, and various other primates? What about dolphins? Whales? We have no way of knowing if they are sentient or not, but they’re certainly quite intelligent, so there’s no reason to dismiss the possibility. Dog owners will swear that their pets are intelligent enough to think for themselves; quite possibly they’re right. We just don’t know.

You might argue that humans are the most successful, in which case I have to ask – how do you measure success? If you measure it in terms of numbers, then I’m afraid ants have got us licked. Intelligence? Hey, maybe dolphins are more intelligent than us. Technological advancement is probably the only area at which humans definitely surpass all other species on this planet. However, technology isn’t necessary for survival, and hence no other species have happened to evolve in ways that make it like that.

Maybe technological advancement to our level is just really really unlikely, and that’s why no other species (that we know of) have done it. How did we get so lucky? Well, consider this: If we hadn’t, then we wouldn’t be able to have this debate at all. It’s the weak anthropic principle at work.

As for a standard of proof that evolution is fact, this guy has a pretty decent offer on the table, and a process by which any offered “proof” can be evaluated.”

That guy is a complete hypocrite. He goes on about how evolution can’t be proven, and then turns around and says “I have taught for years that evolution is nothing but a religion mixed in with real science. Many have been duped into believing in it. […] It is time that intelligent people the world over began to admit that the king has no clothes! […] I recommend that everyone prepare for that day by taking advantage of God’s mercy and forgiveness afforded through the free salvation offered to any who will confess their sin and receive Jesus Christ as their Lord. If you are interested in learning more about becoming a Christian, please call me.”

He condemns evolution as a “religion” and then pushes his own as a viable alternative, without offering *any* proof – let alone the same high level of proof that he demands from evolutionists! That’s completely hypocritical.

Furthermore, evolution does NOT have ANYTHING to do with the beginning of the universe, as he asserts. Evolutionists often believe in the big bang theory, but that is not necessarily the case and the theories are not linked in any way. One can accept evolution as a valid theory while challenging the big bang. Presenting them as the same argument is a straw man fallacy.

just_dave

Posted 01 June 2006 at 08:46 pm

And about the evolution flame war: neither side will ever convince the other. Much of it transcends logic to blind faith, on both sides.”

I don’t think it’s a flame war per se; the discourse has been uncommonly civil, and I dare say has “evolved” naturally from the original subject matter. I would disagree that neither side will convince the other; I was once a die-hard evolutionist, and it was the reasoned arguments of a science prof that showed me the error in that line of thinking.

But regarding the mention of blind faith, you’re absolutely correct. I would add though, that believing in evolution requires a greater leap of faith than believing that all that exists is a result of intelligent design. Empirical evidence suggests that matter tends to gravitate towards disorder unless acted upon by an external force, whereas evolution — and a universe that is the result of blind forces acting on matter — requires matter to do the opposite. It just doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, back to the “Two Eggs…”; one thing that struck me as funny is how research is going on to help women procreate without men, but not the other way round. Might it be because no man wants to carry a baby for 9 months, much less birth it?

CptPicard

Posted 01 June 2006 at 09:01 pm

Hayley said: And about the evolution flame war: neither side will ever convince the other. Much of it transcends logic to blind faith, on both sides.

This is the typical useless “cease-fire offer” from a creationist who has run out of ammunition ;) Don’t try dragging the scientific method down to the level of faith-based argumentation. They are not equal in merit when debating things. There isn’t any more blind faith in evolutionary science than there is in other sciences, and I would say evolution is far more thoroughly understood and has more actual proof to back it up than, say, our modern cosmology.

Hayley

Posted 01 June 2006 at 10:15 pm

I am a die-hard evolutionist. I believe in nothing that I cannot see some clear evidence for myself of in the world. But true science says that nothing is ever known absolutely for certain because then you get people who hold to ridiculous beliefs when all the evidence points to the contrary. For instance, for thousands of years people knew without a doubt that the Sun went around the Earth. We now know that the Earth goes around the Sun, but even the most intelligent astrophysicists will tell you that it is “scientific theory” as opposed to “fact”. That means it is based ridiculously strong in fact, but that there is always a chance it is wrong, no matter how unlikely it seems. I also don’t mean that evolution is faith-based at all. I mean that when people get angry and arguments get anger-driven, it becomes less fact and more faith and anger speaking.

Cynthia Wood

Posted 01 June 2006 at 10:30 pm

just_dave – there are researchers around looking into the possibilities of male pregnancy – at least one set in France that I know of. As far as I’m aware however, they are concentrating purely on the pregnancy aspect, and using a normal sperm/egg combination to get the embryo in the first place. The difficulty of a sperm/sperm combination is a bit harder to overcome than the egg/egg problem, because in addition to the gene imprinting, you also have to deal with the lack of cellular mass. Eggs supply the mitochondria, and the bulk of the internal cell structure, sperm simply don’t have the volume to make up the difference.

I stick with science for my explanations of the universe because science has shown a willingness to be proven wrong. Not always easily or quickly, but if enough data works against a hypothesis, eventually a new hypothesis will be presented, and the old one thrown out. Religion does not work that way. Since I tend to the tenet “If you turn away from God to follow the truth, you will not go far before falling into his arms.” I don’t find any contradiction at all in believing in God, while finding science provides better explanations of many things than theology does.

Madbassist

Posted 01 June 2006 at 10:37 pm

I feel the need to point out that micro evolution or “adaptation” is proven. But macro evolution is not, there is no real evidence that any type of spiecies that has managed to change its dna, and “evolve” into another type.

Also, if macro evolution is real, how come i’m not seeing fish crawling out of the ocean. Or half feathered lizards running around. Mabye I’m just in the wrong place, if you guys see any, let me know :’)

tazza

Posted 02 June 2006 at 05:19 am

Am I the only one who finds it unbelievable money is being spent on this research? And for what?

Face it, all these comments about leaving men out of the loop are from women who cant find one:
A. Women often enjoy sex much more than men due to reasons that dont need to be mentioned here
B. Men use sex as a weapon too – this shows an equal wanting.
C. Hang around women who actually get it, and they will say they are becoming up tight because they havent had it in a while.

These are the views you get growing up as a bloke with 4 sisters, no brothers, 12 female cousins, 1 male cousin and n equal number of male/female friends.

Shandooga

Posted 02 June 2006 at 01:24 pm

The evolution argument will never end on it’s own (you’re welcome) because evolutionists can always make up an explanation citing the observable existence of an organism as the evidence that the unobserved process *must* have taken place. Of course they will never have to *prove* it because no one has “millions of years” to watch it fail.

Even if the *invisible* hand of God were to create a life form smack in the middle of an evolution convention, they would all say “See, it just evolved!” An “impossibly long, improbably unbroken string of extraordinarily unlikely coincidences” is an acceptable explanation for the sterile existence of a loveless person. Anyone who has actually experienced *true* love (not an irresistable urge to procreate) would never accept a proposition of such astronomical stupidity as evolution to explain the wonder of biological systems, consciousness, self-determination –and love.

wh44

Posted 02 June 2006 at 04:48 pm

How many creationists do we have here?! I would expect fewer at such a science heavy site, but here goes:

hal said: “natural selection does not equal evolution.”

Several people have repeated this with no explanation. In fact, as alan heckman pointed out, mutation + natural selection is evolution. Are you denying mutations occur?

Madbassist said: “I feel the need to point out that micro evolution or “adaptation” is proven. But macro evolution is not, there is no real evidence that any type of spiecies that has managed to change its dna, and “evolve” into another type. “

Macro evolution is nothing other than micro evolution over very long periods of time. The little changes eventually add up to something very different than the original species. Accepting that micro evolution exists, but denying macro evolution, is like admitting that a tectonic plate moves a centimeter a year, but denying that it has moved 10 kilometers in the past million years, despite other evidence that it has.

Madbassist said: “Also, if macro evolution is real, how come i’m not seeing fish crawling out of the ocean. Or half feathered lizards running around. Mabye I’m just in the wrong place, if you guys see any, let me know :’)”

Actually, there are crawling fish :’). But aside from that, the “half feathered lizards” of old died out as the unfeathered lizards and more fully feathered lizards both competed with them. If a new one were to evolve, it would need to have a competitive advantage, or at least no disadvantage.

just_dave said: “The examples of science experiments on fruit flies and elephant tusk length are closer to the process of selective breeding, which is a far cry from what evolutionists claim happened to produce the biological diversity we see today.”

just_dave said: “As for a standard of proof that evolution is fact, this guy has a pretty decent offer on the table, and a process by which any offered “proof” can be evaluated.”

No, he doesn’t have a decent offer. For someone to claim the prize, they have to give irrefutable proof of a number of things that have nothing to do with evolution as understood by most scientists, including the ‘big bang’ theory and the spontaneous creation of the first life form. Evolution only covers what happens after there is a reproducing life form, not how that first life form was created.

Shandooga said: “The evolution argument will never end on it’s own (you’re welcome) because evolutionists can always make up an explanation citing the observable existence of an organism as the evidence that the unobserved process *must* have taken place. Of course they will never have to *prove* it because no one has “millions of years” to watch it fail.”

Now you’re just making me mad! Why don’t you address the mountains of evidence of evolutionary chains? There are fossil remains showing the evolution of pretty much every vertebrate life form in existence today. We don’t hypothesize them out of thin air, there is evidence, damn it!

Shandooga said: “Even if the *invisible* hand of God were to create a life form smack in the middle of an evolution convention, they would all say “See, it just evolved!” “

Now you’re just being silly.

Shandooga said: “Anyone who has actually experienced *true* love (not an irresistable urge to procreate) would never accept a proposition of such astronomical stupidity as evolution to explain the wonder of biological systems, consciousness, self-determination –and love.”

I think your equating belief in evolution with atheism. They are not the same. I believe quite firmly in both evolution and God.

To those who deny that evolution exists, I repeat: What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) evolution?

*Whew*, that ended up being long. I am glad this discussion has remained (mostly) civil. :-)

Cynthia Wood

Posted 02 June 2006 at 08:51 pm

As a note on something different – we’ve had a couple of people saying things about ugly feminists who can’t get any, and their supposed efforts to get rid of men.

I have yet to see any feminist leaping on this gleefully. Only people claiming that feminists will. In other minor notes, the three most feminist women I know are all happily married, and have been for years. So can the insults, huh? They’re not true; they’re not clever, and thinking they are says tons more about the thinker than about the feminists.

Hal: You are obviously trying hard, but I still don’t get it. As far as I know, the two things you keep saying are different are merely different aspects of the same thing. My understanding of the theory of evolution is that all it says is that when a naturally occuring mutation happens and turns out to be beneficial, natural selection is likely make the mutation widespread after several generations, either wiping out the old phenotype or just creating two phenotypes that live side by side… So guess Evolution and Natural selection aren’t strictly speaking the same thing, but Evolution logically must occur, given random mutations and natural selection and a very long time. Surely you aren’t arguing that mutations don’t occur? That seems like it has been pretty well demonstrated.

Let me know where you are coming from.”

wow, a lot of comments since i last checked in. read through them all and there’s a bit of work to be done here =D

having this tiny little comment box doesn’t help either. anyone else have troubles with this little box. anyway i digress, back to the other diversion. (funny thread hijack eh, the diversion has become the main topic)

alan heckman:
there is ample proof that mutations occur. i hope i wasn’t perceived as saying this does not occur. evolution and natural selection are definitely different things.

hal

Posted 02 June 2006 at 11:50 pm

to nutshell it, natural selection is when an organism has some sort of advantage which allows it a greater chance for its genes to spread. Natural selection does not add new information to a species and actually removes information from the species.

THE PHOFONS

PART 1
think about it this way, let’s say that there are three phenotypes in a population of herbivorous aliens called Phofons who inhabit the Planet Polka-Dota Epsilon. they are coloured red, blue or green and reproduce asexually by budding off like plants and/or bacteria. no mixing of primary colours please. their food source is funnily enough various algae that is also coloured blue, green or red.

these coloured algae can be eaten by any phofon, in fact all the phofon’s great Eaterons eat 1/3 of each coloured algae, and accordingly it would be tremendously bad to the point of social suicide to only eat one colour algae. (the Eaterons are at the zenith of the social ladder at planet polka-dota, what they say is law). YumX3 (the greatest Eateron of them all) declared, “the cultured diet is one where all 3 algae’s are consumed with equal proportion.”

however, this law is rigorously debated by the so called laizyfaires group of phofon society (all of whom were coloured red), who argue that all algae taste the same, and it wouldn’t matter if one ate only reds, or only blue, or only greens. this idea however proved to be a bit too radical for the majority of phofon culture.

hal

Posted 02 June 2006 at 11:51 pm

PART 2
the phofons are not at the top of the food chain at Polka-Dota Epsilon. Their fearsome predators the eYeballers hunt the phofons by sight. the peaceful and harmless phofons only defence is to blend in with their surroundings, each one scampering over to the patch of coloured algae that is their colour. the phofons who successfully do this, or by sheer luck are already standing in a patch of algae of the same colour when the eYeballers are harrying, have a 100% chance to escape death. Unfortunately, the odds are precisely the other way around for any phofon who stands in a patch of algae that isn’t of their colour. this is of course the most compelling argument that the laizyfaires make about not having to eat 1/3 of each colour and each phofon should just make do with eating his own coloured algae. the Eaterons will have none of this of course, putting forth the equally compelling argument that if a one were to be eYeballed in the course of eating a different coloured patch of algae, a phofon had departed the noblest way that a phofon could hope to achieve. the laizyfaires however, steadfastly refused to follow the Eaterons laws and stuck to eating red algae. in this way they were kept safe from being eYeballed.

strangely enough, after a few generations, there were a lot more red laizyfaires than all blue and green phofons combined!

then the sad day inevitably came… the last remaining blue and green phofon were eYeballed while eating and standing on a patch of red algae.

now the entire Planet of Polka-Dota Epsilon is only inhabited by red phofons…

hal

Posted 02 June 2006 at 11:52 pm

PART 3
Moral of the Story

that my internet acquaintance is an example of natural selection. what it did was take away the blue and green phenotypes, and selected for the red ones. no information was added, blue and green are lost forever… only the reds remain.

evolution is entirely different, (i think evolution is wrong btw!) however, that is another story. i can’t go on today (doing house shifting tomorrow)

however, please take the time to peruse and explore the links below. i trust and hope all of you will find them enlightening.

hal

Posted 02 June 2006 at 11:54 pm

ok i had more to this but i can’t post anymore… all my comments are awaiting moderation, so we’ll just have to wait till the moderator comes along…

Reilly

Posted 03 June 2006 at 04:24 am

hal said: “PART 3

Moral of the Story

that my internet acquaintance is an example of natural selection. what it did was take away the blue and green phenotypes, and selected for the red ones. no information was added, blue and green are lost forever… only the reds remain.”

You are vastly oversimplifying an unimaginably complex, constantly changing situation into a simple static one, with misleading results. There is far more to evolution then simply not getting eaten. Limited resources mean that you don’t have to fail (evolution wise) to become extinct.

Your long (and somewhat confusing) story fails in at least two important regards when you stated that the Phofons reproduce “asexually by budding off like plants..” is incorrect for the vast majority of plants. Pollen carries plant “sperm”.
Secondly, do humans (or animals or plants) reproduce asexually? Sexual reproduction combined with mutations (which occur constantly. Over 80% of fertilised eggs in humans are washed away in the women’s next period because it is simply too drastically wrong.) will give rise to new, slightly different competitors from time to time. And if the new guys are able to “muscle out” for whatever reason the old ones, then bingo, you’ve got a new species.

Any model of this type will fail when you assume that the environment is static. This is not a reasonable assumption to make when constructing your model and neither is stating that every organism of a type is exactly the same. New information can and does arise. Information can be added or deleted at any stage.

hal

Posted 03 June 2006 at 05:03 am

… as i said, i have other comments, but they are all awaiting moderation..

reilly, please open your mind. you are after all on this site. … why are you nitpicking and being pedantic about the phorons? … yes of course plants are sexual… where do you think fruits come from, and flowers are extravagant and beautiful sexual organs… hence me writing ASEXUAL and BUDDING off like plants… sigh…

now referring back to the moral of the story… i was in no way referring to evolution… i was referring to natural selection… unfortunately some of my post(s) are still awaiting moderation, so i tried to overcome it by posting shorter lenghts, which partially worked (some of the posts are still awaiting moderation…)

any model of this type will fail when i assume that the environment is static? … blue and green dying out totally is static? they had three different colours, three different algae colours and a predator, and you can say that every organism is the same? … sigh…

i think you will find those two sites VERY interesting. on the answersingenesis site, it would probably be better to read the technical or semi-technical documents, as they have more detail in them.

cheers

HiEv

Posted 03 June 2006 at 05:08 am

just_dave said: “The examples of science experiments on fruit flies and elephant tusk length are closer to the process of selective breeding, which is a far cry from what evolutionists claim happened to produce the biological diversity we see today.”

Not true. There is a selective pressure that favors longer lived fruit flies or elephants with shorter tusks, thus more of them tend to survive and reproduce, thus the later generations tend to evolve in that direction.

That’s what evolution is, the result of natural selection over time. Whether the pressure is caused by humans, predators, bacteria, or changes in the environment, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is genes tending to become more or less common in a particular gene pool over time due to the advantages or disadvantages that they provide to the organisms and species that have them.

just_dave said: “Evolution supposedly involves one species changing through a series of mutations to become a totally different species.”

No, evolution is not restricted to speciation, it includes changes within a species as well. In fact, while species often split off into separate branches if they become genetically isolated, it is entirely possible for one species to evolve into something quite different over a large enough time so that one can only make arbitrary decisions about what point to call it a new species.

Furthermore, mutations are not required for evolution if you have a sufficiently large gene pool to begin with. Simply by shuffling around existing genes through sexual reproduction you can usually produce improvements on the current species. I’m a computer programmer who has worked with genetic algorithms, and I’ve seen answers to problems evolve on computer with no mutations necessary.

just_dave said: “That is something that has yet to be proven, but is for some reason accepted as fact.”

Not true. The fact that drug resistant strains of bacteria appear is a well known proof of evolution. However, even when speaking of speciation, there is scientific proof that this occurs as well. See “29+ Evidences for Macroevolution” for example.

just_dave said: “The question I would leave for the evolutionists here is, if evolution has continued to produce increasingly advanced organisms on the planet, then why are humans the only species that has achieved sentience? And why are there still simple organisms after billions of years of evolution?”

Because your premise is false and demonstrates a poor understanding of the theory of evolution. Evolution has nothing to do with how “advanced” an organism is, all that matters is it’s ability to survive and reproduce. If by becoming simpler an organism improves its ability to survive and reproduce, then natural selection will favor that simpler organism.

Evolution does not have a “goal” of any sort, let alone achieving sentience. If an organism becoming stupider makes it more able to survive, say due to it being able to react more quickly, then that species will evolve away from sentience. Like I said, the ability to survive and reproduce is all that matters, and evolution has no foresight, it only deals with what is advantageous right at that moment.

You’ve probably been misinformed by others on what evolution really is, and if you continue to discuss this with other people knowledgeable in evolution they can help correct some of the misinformation that you’ve been fed by well meaning, but quite wrong, individuals. Most of the creationists I’ve talked to have, through little fault of their own other than being too trusting of some sources, fundamental misunderstandings about evolution that they have quite reasonably used as reasons to disbelieve evolution. However, once they were made aware of those faulty premises they had to rethink their positions.

just_dave said: “As for a standard of proof that evolution is fact, this guy has a pretty decent offer on the table, and a process by which any offered “proof” can be evaluated.”

No offense, but that guy doesn’t understand the difference between the origin of the universe, abiogenesis, and evolution. The requirements are impossible and mostly irrelevant, and the offer is a joke. I recommend reading “Kent Hovind’s $250,000 Offer“.

Furthermore, his whole argument is based on the false dichotomy that if evolution is wrong then creationism is right. Sorry, but science doesn’t work by disproving other things and then insisting you’re all that’s left, it works by demonstrating the accuracy of your own claims. However, as long as creationism/ID continues to be neither testable nor falsifiable it cannot be considered scientific.

hal

Posted 03 June 2006 at 05:12 am

i used to comment as hal which is a bugmenot username. now i will post as yohn.

i think you will find those two sites VERY interesting. on the answersingenesis site, it would probably be better to read the technical or semi-technical documents, as they have more detail in them.

highly recommended. every single comment and question concerning evolution, natural selection and creationism can be answered from the creationist perspective by those two sites. we will all be more informed and educated from those two sites.

cheers

HiEv

Posted 03 June 2006 at 06:04 am

Hal, the big problem with your “phofon” story is that it overlooks some very important points.

First of all, I assume that they’re not constantly eating, correct? Also, by your description, I’m guessing that they have to be standing on the algae in order to eat it? And finally, the algae growing in colored patches large enough for a phofon to stand on, instead of all mixed together, suggests that the three colors of algae are different species, correct?

OK, then the problem becomes that you have three species of algae that are being consumed in different proportions. Red algae will be consumed far more often than green or blue algae, because red is eaten at a ratio of 100%/33%/33% by the red, green, and blue phofons respectively, while blue and green algae are eaten at a ratio of 0%/33%/33% by the population. For an equal population of red, green, and blue phofons that means that 2.5 times more red algae is eaten than green or blue algae. This gives the red algae an evolutionary disadvantage and will probably cause it to become less common over time.

What does this mean for the phofons? It means that there will be less hiding places for the red phofons, making them easier prey, and more hiding places for the green and blue phofons when they’re not eating, making them safer. Remember, you have the red phofons eating away their own hiding places.

Another problem is that, even if the green and blue phofons are easier to catch, they probably won’t die out because as they become less common, that means that there is less feeding on the blue and green algae, making those kinds of algae more common, which helps the blue and green phofons hide better. Also, if a predator’s food supply runs too low, then the predators tend to die out first. The number of predators is almost always a fraction of the number of its prey, so as the number of prey dwindle to small numbers, the predators would usually starve out first, and then the prey has an increased opportunity to rebound.

What’s more likely to happen in your setup is that the system will reach a point of stability, with more red phofons than blues or greens, but not so many reds that they end up reducing the red algae to the point where they have too few hiding places/locations to feed, while creating a sufficient increase in the amount of blue and green algae so that makes it easier for blue and green phofons to hide than the red phofons.

Because of these flaws in your story, coming to any conclusions based on it would be pointless. Anyone can make up an unrealistic story that supports any point, but the point is not valid when the evidence supporting it is totally manufactured and contradicts what would be found in the real world.

And finally, this whole “adding information; removing information” thing is just a red herring, as no reason for its importance or relevance is ever explained, nor even what is meant by “information” in this context.

yohn

Posted 03 June 2006 at 06:26 am

HiEv

i think you are reading far too much into the story. all those issues that you referred to, i had thought of, but it is a story that i think quite adequately explains natural selection. i did want to say the algae grew in different patches of a certain size, and that they grew at a prodigious rate, but also at the same time did not overcrowd, so that the ratio of 1/3 1/3 1/3 was always maintained. also with the predator, yes of course that was considered, but u know this is a story to demonstrate what natural selection is.

it is a common teaching tool and is used as a means to show an idea. the story is not unrealistic if it is taken in context… please please please do not miss the forest for the trees, which i noticed the both of you doing… the story quite simply shows a form of natural selection.

it’s not a red herring, i see you have exposure to either debates, critical thought, or something along those lines, good for you, you will need those mental tools in life.

This is the exeption, not the rule though. The very fact that any other type exists makes your argument moot.

hal said: “

now referring back to the moral of the story… i was in no way referring to evolution… i was referring to natural selection… “

Natural selection is the process that allows evolution to show itself. To admit the existance of one and deny the other doesn’t make sense.

yohn said: ”
it is a common teaching tool and is used as a means to show an idea. the story is not unrealistic if it is taken in context… please please please do not miss the forest for the trees, which i noticed the both of you doing… the story quite simply shows a form of natural selection.
“

You state quite a number of times that it is just a story to get an idea across but then expect to derive evidence for debate from a story. It shows a form of natural selection that could exist, at best on paper.

The problem with your websites is that they all go on the basis of “if evolution is incorrect then I.D must be right”. The rare cases that have any “evidence” generally ignore other competing evidence whenever they find it conveniant and then extrapolate to illogical conclusions. It simply isn’t science to demand every single piece of evidence from one side while the other requires none.

cheers

wh44

Posted 03 June 2006 at 10:15 am

Yohn & those who don’t believe in evolution: not one of my points was answered. Certainly not by that overly long phofon story that completely ignores the issue of mutations.

I repeat again: What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) evolution?

Oh, and regarding the “ugly feminists” comments: I am married to a feminist. Perhaps some folks here have misconceptions about feminists? Most feminists just want a level “playing field”, no special favors. On that point, I could be considered a feminist too, although I’m a man.

Shandooga

Posted 03 June 2006 at 06:32 pm

wh44 said: …Now you’re just being silly…

I think your equating belief in evolution with atheism. They are not the same. I believe quite firmly in both evolution and God.)”

I’m not being ‘silly’, I’m quite serious. Belief in God negates any need for belief in evolution; only atheism needs evolution. This so-called ‘evidence’ of evolution is really evidence of a thought process (“let *us* make man in *our* image). Why must creation be magical? Why would an almighty God *not* be logical and methodical in creating things? Would *anyone* create a bunch of things that don’t work within the system into which they’re being placed? Evolution is a farce.

Reilly

Posted 03 June 2006 at 06:55 pm

Shandooga said: “I’m not being ‘silly’, I’m quite serious. Belief in God negates any need for belief in evolution; only atheism needs evolution. This so-called ‘evidence’ of evolution is really evidence of a thought process (“let *us* make man in *our* image). Why must creation be magical? Why would an almighty God *not* be logical and methodical in creating things? Would *anyone* create a bunch of things that don’t work within the system into which they’re being placed? Evolution is a farce.”

Wrong. Flat out wrong. Belief in evolution and belief in God are two entirely different things. There are many supporters of evolution who believe in God, as well as many who do not. I myself was raised Christian. I turned my back on it because I disagree with the way the teachings of Jesus are re-interpreted by the church nowadays but I still maintain that there is a higher power in one form or another out there. He (it?) still needs a mechanism to actually get things done.

And you still haven’t answered the question that has been posed several times. In the face of very strong evidence you blindly insist that “evolution is a farce” with no evidence to support this argument and no attempt to address the issues raised by the pro evolution side. Until you can do this there is not even a debate.

yohn

Posted 03 June 2006 at 09:35 pm

wh44 said: “Yohn & those who don’t believe in evolution: not one of my points was answered. Certainly not by that overly long phofon story that completely ignores the issue of mutations.

I repeat again: What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) evolution?

Oh, and regarding the “ugly feminists” comments: I am married to a feminist. Perhaps some folks here have misconceptions about feminists? Most feminists just want a level “playing field”, no special favors. On that point, I could be considered a feminist too, although I’m a man.”

hi wh44

it may interest you to know that i was a believer in evolution. that phofon story was for my and i hoped others amusement, and was certainly not aimed at addressing mutations… it was to show natural selection. and only natural selection, not mutations, not evolution and not even creation. just natural selection.

wh44, please go to the two links i provided to find some good articles on issues brought up so far. your points wil be answered there.

Reilly

Posted 03 June 2006 at 09:51 pm

yohn said: “hi wh44

it may interest you to know that i was a believer in evolution. that phofon story was for my and i hoped others amusement, and was certainly not aimed at addressing mutations… it was to show natural selection. and only natural selection, not mutations, not evolution and not even creation. just natural selection.

wh44, please go to the two links i provided to find some good articles on issues brought up so far. your points wil be answered there.”

The point you continue to miss is that natural selection is impossible to separate from evolution. They are part and parcel. You need to either accept both or reject both.

I am interested to hear what it was that convinced you to change your mind away from evolution in the first place. Was it faith based or did some real evidence convince you?

And regarding your websites; any site displaying a “proof” of the young earth model is clearly not taking into account all the availible data. They do not play by the rules of science yet purport to scientifically disprove well grounded, strongly supported scientific fact.

yohn

Posted 04 June 2006 at 12:37 am

Reilly said: “The point you continue to miss is that natural selection is impossible to separate from evolution. They are part and parcel. You need to either accept both or reject both.

I am interested to hear what it was that convinced you to change your mind away from evolution in the first place. Was it faith based or did some real evidence convince you?

And regarding your websites; any site displaying a “proof” of the young earth model is clearly not taking into account all the availible data. They do not play by the rules of science yet purport to scientifically disprove well grounded, strongly supported scientific fact.”

Reilly, natural selection can be separated from evolution. It is not a package deal. Natural selection does not require evolution, but evolution requires natural selection. there is no need to either accept both or reject both.

it’s a mixture of faith, thought and evidence that showed creation is more feasible than evolution.

about the websites, do not be so quick to dismiss ideas. i understand that they may at first prove too radical to someone new to them, but press on and I think you will find them quite reasonable. Look up the technical and semi-technical articles. They do play by the rules of science.

cheers

Reilly

Posted 04 June 2006 at 03:12 am

yohn said: “Reilly, natural selection can be separated from evolution. It is not a package deal. Natural selection does not require evolution, but evolution requires natural selection. there is no need to either accept both or reject both.

it’s a mixture of faith, thought and evidence that showed creation is more feasible than evolution.

about the websites, do not be so quick to dismiss ideas. i understand that they may at first prove too radical to someone new to them, but press on and I think you will find them quite reasonable. Look up the technical and semi-technical articles. They do play by the rules of science.

cheers”

The point was made quite a while ago that to accept accepting that micro evolution exists (in the form of natural selection), but denying macro evolution, is like admitting that a tectonic plate moves a centimetre a year, but denying that it has moved 10 kilometres in the past million years, despite other evidence that it has.

If there are small changes occurring constantly (in evolutionary time speak) then how could over the close to 4 billion year history of life on this planet things still be essentially the same? You continue to insist that 1+1+1+1+1+….+1 = 0

I am interested in the specific evidence that changed your point of view. For example I find it somewhat biased to come to the conclusion that 6006 years ago God spent the better part of a week knocking together every form of life we see on the planet and then carefully created an enormous body of evidence to show that it actually happened gradually over a couple of billion years, not to mention hiding EVERY SHRED of proof about the true origin of the earth.

The idea God would endow man (and women) with this wonderful gift that we call intelligence and provide many, many pieces of data that fit nicely into a simple and elegant idea only to have it all be incorrect because God is an asshole and hid everything from us seems just a bit unlikely.

On another note the trueorigin.org article about “the five problems with evolution” makes for some interesting reading.

1) Evolution has never been observed.

Wrong. Micro evolution has been clearly proven. Bacterial resistance, proven. The elephants from much earlier, more evolution. The time taken for large scale evolutionary change dwarfs a human lifetime and as such is less obvious.

2) Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Rubbish. If you realise earth is not a closed system but rather receives a constant, enormous supply of thermal energy from the sky then there is no problem.

4) The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance.

Not true. Evolution does not have an opinion about the origin of life, merely that it happened. Chance plays its part but the real driving force is fitness.

5) Evolution is only a theory: it hasn’t been proven.

Finally something that is correct, although misleading. While it is true that evolution has not been proved, countless observations are in agreement about this generally concept. If the day after tomorrow we find the fossilised remains of a T – rex with a 10 year old boy in its stomach then evolution will have been disproved. This however does not prove creationism.

Bolens

Posted 04 June 2006 at 05:37 am

Reilly said: I myself was raised Christian. I turned my back on it because I disagree with the way the teachings of Jesus are re-interpreted by the church nowadays but I still maintain that there is a higher power in one form or another out there.

How sad. John 14:6 should never be reinterpreted, but the “everyone gets to heaven” teachers are everywhere. I am glad that you still maintain there is a higher power in an age where people will hang their hat on any philosophy or theory to support their lifestyle choices. Evolution is not the issue.

What was this topic again? Oh yeah… eggs.

The chickens came first.

wh44

Posted 04 June 2006 at 01:47 pm

Shandooga said: “I’m not being ‘silly’, I’m quite serious. Belief in God negates any need for belief in evolution; only atheism needs evolution. This so-called ‘evidence’ of evolution is really evidence of a thought process (“let *us* make man in *our* image). Why must creation be magical? Why would an almighty God *not* be logical and methodical in creating things? Would *anyone* create a bunch of things that don’t work within the system into which they’re being placed? Evolution is a farce.”

My belief in God does not require me to believe or disbelieve in evolution, but the evidence for evolution is so strong that I cannot believe otherwise without having an inconsistent world view. If God created the world just a few thousand years ago, why did He create so much evidence for an older world and for evolution? Why would He give us what I consider to be His greatest gift, intellect, if we weren’t meant to use it?

I think the story of creation, like many other stories in the bible, is allegorical – meant to teach a lesson and not be interpreted as the literal truth. My interpretation, is that God created the universe in such a way, that evolution occured, which created us – or more simply stated, God used evolution as a tool to create us.

yohn said: “wh44, please go to the two links i provided to find some good articles on issues brought up so far. your points wil be answered there.”

I went to the two sites. Many, many articles – it would take me a year to read it all. That which I did read was not convincing.

For instance, they go on and on about a few fossils being found to be faked. Sure, where there is fame or a profit to be made, there will on occasion be an unscrupulous individual, but the very fact that these fakes were uncovered points to the fact that scientists are careful about what they accept, and the vast majority of fossils are not faked.

What was it that convinced you? Why don’t you answer the points made?

Cynthia Wood

Posted 04 June 2006 at 02:05 pm

Shaandooga – I’m completely confused by the idea that belief in God eliminates any need for evolution. Why wouldn’t we want to know the processes of the world, even if God created them? If God created the multitude of species on the planet via evolution, I want to know that. If he used some other method – then I not only want to know that, I want to know what it was, how it worked, when it happened – everything knowable about it. Simply saying “God did it, and that’s all I need to know,” isn’t sufficient to me.

yohn, creationism is always going to look more feasible than evolution as long as the reaction to discrepencies in evolution (and every theory, everywhere has some) is “Look – it doesn’t work!” while creationism simply says “God was there.” If the answer to every discrepency is “because God did it that way”, then there’s no hope of any explanation, anywhere, other than creationism because creationism will always “make sense”.

Reilly

Posted 04 June 2006 at 05:02 pm

Bolens said: “How sad. John 14:6 should never be reinterpreted, but the “everyone gets to heaven” teachers are everywhere. I am glad that you still maintain there is a higher power in an age where people will hang their hat on any philosophy or theory to support their lifestyle choices. Evolution is not the issue. “

Even further off topic but since you brought it up…
My problem with the church is that for an organisation allegedly founded by a man of Middle Eastern appearance whose message was basically be good to everyone; regardless of who they are. You all seem to spend your time worrying about gays, contraception, evolution, preventing women from joining the clergy and generally forcing your opinions on others. If you could only worry about the message rather then the details then the world would be a much better place.

And as Homer Simpson said in Ep9F01 “Do you really think God cares where you spend one measly hour of your week?… So I just try to live right and if I’m wrong I’ll recant on my deathbed.”

Amen brother.

P.S. I just noticed I forgot to paste my conclusion into my last post. Sloppy.

Cynthia Wood said: “Shaandooga – I’m completely confused by the idea that belief in God eliminates any need for evolution. Why wouldn’t we want to know the processes of the world, even if God created them? If God created the multitude of species on the planet via evolution, I want to know that. If he used some other method – then I not only want to know that, I want to know what it was, how it worked, when it happened – everything knowable about it. Simply saying “God did it, and that’s all I need to know,” isn’t sufficient to me.

yohn, creationism is always going to look more feasible than evolution as long as the reaction to discrepencies in evolution (and every theory, everywhere has some) is “Look – it doesn’t work!” while creationism simply says “God was there.” If the answer to every discrepency is “because God did it that way”, then there’s no hope of any explanation, anywhere, other than creationism because creationism will always “make sense”.”

oops i was a bit fast on the click there Reilly

right, on that link i gave u it actually says not to make a distinction between micro and macro evolution. quote:
‘Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution.’ These terms, which focus on ‘small’ v. ‘large’ changes, distract from the key issue of information. That is, particles-to-people evolution requires changes that increase genetic information, but all we observe is sorting and loss of information. We have yet to see even a ‘micro’ increase in information, although such changes should be frequent if evolution were true. Conversely, we do observe quite ‘macro’ changes that involve no new information, e.g. when a control gene is switched on or off.

and

‘There are no transitional forms.’ Since there are candidates, even though they are highly dubious, it’s better to avoid possible comebacks by saying instead: ‘While Darwin predicted that the fossil record would show numerous transitional fossils, even 140 years later, all we have are a handful of disputable examples.’ See also Q&A: Fossils.

Mutation by its very nature will produce genetic material that is new. To say that it has not been observed is simply untrue. Now admittedly the majority of mutations will be a hindrance rather then a help to the organism, but a tiny fraction will be beneficial and will spread. This can be directly observed as an increasing level of genetic variety in a population. This has been observed.

Transitional fossils have most defiantly been found. Did you check the Wikipedia entry? Another very strong case can be found in the case of whales. Recent finds in Pakistan have pin pointed several stages of whales evolving from land mammals to sea mammals. To this day one of the most common genetic deformities in whales is the growth of legs. The point is dealt with far better and in far more detail then I could ever hope to here.

To say that past scientists were believers in creation reveals no more then saying that Isaac Newton never spoke in favour of quantum physics. Many of the scientific idols held up by creationists pre-date Charles Darwin and therefore should have no bearing on the matter. Since its introduction the scientific community has dramatically changed its opinion. Nowadays creationists in the scientific community are very greatly outnumbered

HiEv

Posted 05 June 2006 at 09:13 am

yohn said: “HiEv

i think you are reading far too much into the story. all those issues that you referred to, i had thought of, but it is a story that i think quite adequately explains natural selection.”

And I think you missed my point. Your story A) isn’t particularly representative of the real world, so it isn’t particularly useful in describing natural selection in the real world, and B) just because the green and blue phofons in the artificial world of your story go extinct with no change in genetic structure does not mean that this is what happens in all, or even most, cases in the real world.

If you think that your story “quite adequately explains natural selection,” then that would mean that natural selection is merely a whittling process where preexisting species die out, and has nothing to do with changes in individuals increasing or decreasing fitness. Sorry, but that story is by no means “adequate” since it would require that every species that has ever existed were all alive at the same time at some point in history, and since then species have only died off. This utterly ignores the fossil record, which shows a continuum of species evolving and dying off over billions of years. Creationism doesn’t explain this in any scientific way, however the theory of evolution does explain it in well supported and scientific manner.

yohn said: “it is a common teaching tool and is used as a means to show an idea. the story is not unrealistic if it is taken in context… please please please do not miss the forest for the trees, which i noticed the both of you doing… the story quite simply shows a form of natural selection.”

Just because it’s a teaching tool does not mean that it can’t be used wrongly. As I stated earlier, anyone can make up an unrealistic story that supports any point, but the point is not valid when the evidence supporting it is totally manufactured and contradicts what would be found in the real world. Your story is unrealistic for the reasons given to you, and no amount of “context” changes that fact.

Furthermore, it only shows one of the many forms of natural selection, and certainly not a particularly representative form. For example, it doesn’t describe natural selection within a species, which is the most common usage of the term. (If, as you said, your phofons do not interbreed even though it’s possible for them to do so, then under some definitions of the term “species” they are indeed different species. Lions and tigers, for example, are capable of interbreeding, but they are considered to be different species in part because they look and behave differently from each other.)

yohn said: “it’s not a red herring”

The “it” you mention there is the undefined “information” you referred to earlier, and yes it is a red herring. When creationists say “new information does not arise” they wrap it in meaningless technobabble about what “information” is and try to define it in a way that anything that most people would count as new information either does not count or they simply insist that it doesn’t happen. However, in doing so they make it so that the description of “information” is both useless and irrelevant to the real world. Their argument becomes the equivalent of, “What you wrote contains no new information because it consists entirely of words that already existed.” In other words, the whole creationist “information” argument is a red herring, a distraction from the overwhelming number of facts available from a variety of branches of science that all strongly support the reality of evolution.

yohn said: “please visit these sites:”

Please stop posting the same links over and over, it doesn’t add anything to the conversation. I have been to those sites plenty of times and they’re loaded with misinformation and false premises. I’ve been debating against creationists on and off for about 20 years now and I’m pretty familiar with the subject, but even if I wasn’t I wouldn’t need you to post the links more than once.

Besides, I am debating with you, not a website. If you have a good argument, make it. If you want to cite a source fine, but simply pawning someone off on a website is just laziness.

Also, I second wh44’s question to you: What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) evolution?

I find it highly telling that you keep dodging that question.

just_dave

Posted 05 June 2006 at 12:38 pm

Wow! Last time I visited the comments here I thought things were petering out; guessed wrong on that!

The thing that strikes me in reading through this thread is that somewhere along the line science went horribly wrong. Early scientists did what they did to explore the God’s creation and to try and figure out how things worked, marvelling at God’s creativity. Now it seems as if the primary goal of science is to eliminate God from the equation altogether; to explain how the universe and all living things could have come into being without intelligent direction. Damn sad.

One of the links provided by yohn had this to say about the differences expressed in this thread (really is worthwhile reading, for those of you on the evolutionist side who are afraid of having your presuppositions challenged):

Evolutionists have certain beliefs about the past/present that they presuppose, e.g. no God (or at least none who performed acts of special creation), so they build a different way of thinking to interpret the evidence of the present. Thus, when Christians and non-Christians argue about the evidence, in reality they are arguing about their interpretations based on their presuppositions.

That’s why the argument often turns into something like:

‘Can’t you see what I’m talking about?’
‘No, I can’t. Don’t you see how wrong you are?’
‘No, I’m not wrong. It’s obvious that I’m right.’
‘No, it’s not obvious.’ And so on.

These two people are arguing about the same evidence, but they are looking at the evidence through different glasses. It’s not until these two people recognize the argument is really about the presuppositions they have to start with, that they will begin to deal with the foundational reasons for their different beliefs. A person will not interpret the evidence differently until they put on a different set of glasses—which means to change one’s presuppositions.

It is the differing worldviews between the creationist and the evolutionist that keep the two from coming to terms, and which is making wh44 mad; he keeps stating what he claims is factual evidence supporting evolution, but all of the creationists see the same evidence pointing to a different conclusion. Read up on worldviews, and how what someone believes affects how they interpret information. Then we all might be able to carry on an intelligent conversation on this subject.

HiEv (and others who demand a standard to prove or disprove evolution): What would be your standard to prove or disprove Creationism, or at least Intelligent Design?

Reilly

Posted 05 June 2006 at 08:35 pm

just_dave said: “Wow! Last time I visited the comments here I thought things were petering out; guessed wrong on that!

The thing that strikes me in reading through this thread is that somewhere along the line science went horribly wrong. Early scientists did what they did to explore the God’s creation and to try and figure out how things worked, marvelling at God’s creativity. Now it seems as if the primary goal of science is to eliminate God from the equation altogether; to explain how the universe and all living things could have come into being without intelligent direction. Damn sad.

HiEv (and others who demand a standard to prove or disprove evolution): What would be your standard to prove or disprove Creationism, or at least Intelligent Design?”

Science does not have a goal apart from increasing the total knowledge of mankind. This is achieved by making hypotheses (?) and testing these against the best evidence at hand. Science is not about God because there is no real, physical, undisputable evidence one way or the other.The existance of God must simply be taken on faith. Natural history on the other hand has left large amounts of data that can be compared with a hypothesis. The hypothesis is evolution and so far evolution has stood up extemly well to testing. The point of evolution is to explain the history of the natural world. No more, no less.

The standard to prove, or at least allow to be taken seriously scientifically, creationism would be a large body of evidence whose only reasonable explaination was the man upstairs. ANY data that is accurate and doesnt agree with a theory means the theory needs a rework. Creationism has an enourmous amount of evidence that runs contrary to the theory. Its as simple as that.

HiEv

Posted 06 June 2006 at 07:10 am

just_dave said: “The thing that strikes me in reading through this thread is that somewhere along the line science went horribly wrong. Early scientists did what they did to explore the God’s creation and to try and figure out how things worked, marvelling at God’s creativity. Now it seems as if the primary goal of science is to eliminate God from the equation altogether; to explain how the universe and all living things could have come into being without intelligent direction. Damn sad. “

I’m afraid you have a particularly unrealistic view of what early scientists did. Science has always been about generating hypotheses and testing them. Some scientists have said that it was about exploring God’s creation and some still do, but for most God was irrelevant to the science that they were dealing with. Simply put, God is supernatural, and by its very nature, science cannot examine the supernatural. It does not seek to eliminate God, it merely sees the supernatural as irrelevant if it cannot be detected or tested.

Still, if you think that one cannot get a sense of wonder by examining the breathtaking beauty of the universe without including God, then I think you’re sorely mistaken. The universe is an amazing place whether God exists or not.

This point, however, is another red herring as it does nothing to support or refute the claims on either side of the argument.

just_dave said: “One of the links provided by yohn had this to say about the differences expressed in this thread (really is worthwhile reading, for those of you on the evolutionist side who are afraid of having your presuppositions challenged):”

I am by no means “afraid of having [my] presuppositions challenged,” in fact I actually enjoy that, however I simply prefer that it be done with appeals to logic and evidence instead of to faith and religion. Creationism has far too little logic or evidence on its side, and that is why most people don’t find it particularly persuasive. It bases its claims on the Bible and then tries to wedge the evidence in to support those claims, rather than taking the evidence and trying to find the most plausible explanation for it.

As for that quote, it falsely makes this a “Christians vs. non-Christians” issue when plenty of Christians have no trouble having compatible beliefs in both Christianity and evolution. I find that part of the quote particularly deceptive and misleading.

It also falsely claims that evolutionists have “certain presuppositions” when the only real presuppositions are that any claim should be supported by objective evidence or it may not be reliable. The creationists, on the other hand, bring in all sorts of presuppositions that are only supported by faith, not objective evidence, and thus are totally unpersuasive to people who don’t simply accept their faith based presuppositions. Evolutionists can support their claims based on tangible evidence and data, creationists cannot (or at the very least, have yet to do so,) thus the creationism argument is burdened with presuppositions when evolution is not. That is a vital difference between the two.

If you are in favor of having your “presuppositions challenged,” then you might want to take a look at these websites:

(Note: I’m not saying you should debate with those sites or that they answer the arguments made here, I’m merely offering them for your perusal so that they might disabuse you of some creationist misinformation.)

just_dave said: “It is the differing worldviews between the creationist and the evolutionist that keep the two from coming to terms, and which is making wh44 mad; he keeps stating what he claims is factual evidence supporting evolution, but all of the creationists see the same evidence pointing to a different conclusion. Read up on worldviews, and how what someone believes affects how they interpret information. Then we all might be able to carry on an intelligent conversation on this subject.”

But this isn’t about “differing worldviews,” this is about which claim is objectively supported by the facts, and objectively speaking, evolution is winning by a landslide.

As for your claim, “all of the creationists see the same evidence pointing to a different conclusion,” that is totally false. There is a huge lack of consensus among creationists whether the Earth is young or old, whether some evolution has taken place or none, whether God should be named as the creator or whether it should be left as some undefined “intelligent designer,” etc… The “Arguments we think creationists should NOT use” link posted earlier give you a sample of some of these basic disputes. Even Michael Behe, one of the shining stars of “intelligent design” (creationism in a suit), has said that he accepts the common decent of species, including humans (see here and here), a point which most creationists would disagree with. It would be more accurate to say that creationists see the evidence in a variety of ways leading to a variety of different conclusions.

On the other hand, evolutionists disputes (which creationists take much delight in exaggerating, sometimes even after they have been resolved) are far smaller in proportion, thus allowing groups like the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) have put forth united statements endorsing evolution (see here). I say the arguments among evolutionists are much smaller than those among creationists, because creationist arguments are often more over whether mutually exclusive events A or B happened, while evolutionary arguments are more over the ratio of how often A vs. B happens in evolution, but accepting that both can occur.

Furthermore, whether some people see the facts differently is irrelevant if they cannot convince the majority of the scientific community that their point of view is valid. I’m sure some people look at crop circles as evidence for visitation by alien intelligences, but that doesn’t mean that their point of view is as valid as the people who believe that they are done by human pranksters and can back that up with video showing them making the circles. Creationism is much the same, it’s a belief held by those who want to believe it despite the improbability and the lack of objective evidence supporting it.

While wishful thinking may be pleasing, it is not the best way to discover truth, for truth cares not for what we wish were true.

just_dave said: “HiEv (and others who demand a standard to prove or disprove evolution): What would be your standard to prove or disprove Creationism, or at least Intelligent Design?”

I see you didn’t bother to answer the question yourself, and yet you want us to answer your version?

The standard for science is that the hypothesis be testable, falsifiable, and have some explanatory power. It needs to be able to make some predictions which can then be tested, and if those predictions are not any better than chance then the hypothesis can be rejected. Besides that, it should have some ability to explain how things got the way they are, such as why the retina is built backwards (with the blood vessels in front of the retina) in fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds, but properly built in squid, or why the ribcage in humans is built more to support the organs when the chest is in a prone position than in an upright position.

The simple fact is, creationism isn’t science because no evidence of any sort can disprove creationism. Evolution, on the other hand, does not have this failing.

If creationism were science then they could publish articles in peer reviewed journals papers that would support their claims, but they don’t do that. They hardly even try. No, instead they attempt to bypass the scientific method by publishing books, putting on private lectures, and attempting to sneak it into the classroom. Essentially they want to make it science by slipping it in through the back door. This was made extremely clear in the judge’s decision in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case. While it’s a long bit of text to get through, I highly recommend reading that decision and some of the trial transcripts.

Simply put, if creationists expect creationism to be treated seriously as a science then they need to start rolling up their sleeves and work on doing some real science by making a clear, testable, and falsifiable hypothesis and then providing some objective evidence supporting that hypothesis in the form of peer reviewed papers for a change. So far they’ve depended heavily on God to do their legwork for them, and it simply isn’t working.

wh44

Posted 07 June 2006 at 02:28 am

just_dave said: “It is the differing worldviews between the creationist and the evolutionist that keep the two from coming to terms, and which is making wh44 mad; he keeps stating what he claims is factual evidence supporting evolution, but all of the creationists see the same evidence pointing to a different conclusion. Read up on worldviews, and how what someone believes affects how they interpret information. Then we all might be able to carry on an intelligent conversation on this subject.”

You say you interpret the evidence differently, but what is your interpretation of the fossil record? You have not stated that anywhere in this discussion.

just_dave said: “HiEv (and others who demand a standard to prove or disprove evolution): What would be your standard to prove or disprove Creationism, or at least Intelligent Design? “

To prove Creationism/ID is correct (as currently taught), I would expect:

– no evidence of the emergence of new species in the fossil record – meaning someone would have to show, with plausible, verifiable evidence, why the apparent chronology of the fossil record is wrong and show that at some point in time all species in the fossil record were present.

– proof that carbon-dating and other current standard dating methods are very wrong and a plausible, verifiable method of dating that shows that nothing is older than some date x.

Note: I do believe that God created everything. I believe He used this really cool tool, called evolution, to create His creatures. :-)

knutars

Posted 07 June 2006 at 11:19 am

a society with only women would be interesting to study. i say go for it, clear all men out of an island somewhere and let women rule and reproduce all by their own and see what happens. i have no idea how it would develop but i think it’s something several women would participate in and also something scientists surely would like to monitor.

Shandooga

Posted 08 June 2006 at 12:00 pm

Cynthia Wood said: “Shaandooga – I’m completely confused by the idea that belief in God eliminates any need for evolution. Why wouldn’t we want to know the processes of the world, even if God created them? If God created the multitude of species on the planet via evolution, I want to know that. If he used some other method – then I not only want to know that, I want to know what it was, how it worked, when it happened – everything knowable about it. Simply saying “God did it, and that’s all I need to know,” isn’t sufficient to me.

yohn, creationism is always going to look more feasible than evolution as long as the reaction to discrepencies in evolution (and every theory, everywhere has some) is “Look – it doesn’t work!” while creationism simply says “God was there.” If the answer to every discrepency is “because God did it that way”, then there’s no hope of any explanation, anywhere, other than creationism because creationism will always “make sense”.”

An illustration:

Suppose, while out strolling in the desert, you stumbled upon a model-T ford, fully fueled, tuned and ready to drive. Nearby you find the next model ford (don’t know specifically what model it was, but that’s not the point). Continue walking and discovering, in order, more and more advanced cars until you reach whatever car you consider to be the “state-of-the-art” in the industry today. You’re out in the desert, no one around. No dealerships, tire tracks, trucks, or obvious means of transporting the vehicles. Nothing that suggests –to you– how the cars might have gottten there. Would you conclude that the cars must have formed by evolution? When you see a sand sculpture or a sand castle on the beach but no one around, do you assume the wind and tide have come together in an unusual way to form it? You would assume that someone *must* have done it.

Does the fact that God has not (yet) interrupted the discussion to announce (on terms evolutionists and atheists will accept) that he has, in fact, specifically designed everything, really constitute proof that he didn’t make anything? What if he did interject? Wouldn’t it end the discussion? No one would any longer have any need of the evolutionary theory, nes pas?

The very fact of the complexity of uber-complex, self-replicating, living organisims existing within several levels of complex, balanced systems (systems within systems) is evidence enough. Anyone who does not see a creator in the fact of this much EVIDENCE does not *want* a creator to exist. The Bible says that God is “opening his hand and satisfying the desire of *every* living thing”. That would include the *desire* of those who would rather he not ruin their fantasy in which an Almighty God does not exist.

Cynthia Wood

Posted 08 June 2006 at 12:53 pm

Shandooga – actually, you’re illustrating my point fairly well for me. The automobiles in question did evolve using a kind of evolution. At each generation things that worked well were kept, and things that didn’t were discarded or improved. Henry Ford could no more have built a 2006 SUV then he could have flown to the moon. The makers of the cars are using a process to alter their cars to the current needs each time they create a new model.

You seem to be claiming earlier that the existence of God negates any need to understand the process. I would argue that even if you accept God as a given, my desire to understand the process remains. As it happens, I believe that the process in question bears a strong resemblence to current evolutionary theory (no theory, or anything else for that matter, is ever 100% completely accurate). I have exactly zero interest in using evolutionary biology to argue either for or against God’s existence. To claim that accepting evolution means denying God, is to argue for a very limited notion of God.

Shandooga

Posted 08 June 2006 at 03:19 pm

Cynthia Wood said: “Shandooga – actually, you’re illustrating my point fairly well for me. The automobiles in question did evolve using a kind of evolution. At each generation things that worked well were kept, and things that didn’t were discarded or improved. Henry Ford could no more have built a 2006 SUV then he could have flown to the moon.

Well, Cynthia, I’m sure you’re not surprised that it is incumbent upon me to disagree yet again. You are correct that Henry Ford could not have built a 2006 Model-T–in 1908. The very fact that Henry Ford was obviously an intelligent designer suffiently establishes the case for intelligent design. Had Ford been able to develop his body of knowledge and experience until now, he very likely would be able to far surpass any car on the market today. All the while he would have been using his *intelligence* to determine which things worked or did not work. He would then use his *intelligence* to *design* an improvement. Had he left the car to it’s own devices, would it have improved on its own? Does your car do that? Does anything? Evolution has no designer; no designer means no design. This is as basic as math gets.

Cynthia Wood said: “Shandooga – actually, you’re illustrating my point fairly well for me. The automobiles in question did evolve using a kind of evolution. At each generation things that worked well were kept, and things that didn’t were discarded or improved. Henry Ford could no more have built a 2006 SUV then he could have flown to the moon.

You seem to be claiming earlier that the existence of God negates any need to understand the process. I would argue that even if you accept God as a given, my desire to understand the process remains. “

The need to understand creation (you can’t even discuss the subject without using the word) varies by individual. For a certainty, all of the intelligence focused on the subject since the beginning of human history has failed to result in a complete understanding (again, a powerful evidence for design by a *far greater* intelligence).

Not to say that one should ever give-up on learning, but a degree of humility (so sorely lacking in many ‘educated’ individuals) would, healthfully, prevent anyone’s supposing that the knowledge of *everything* is nigh. And, yes, that includes the current pursuit of ‘string theory’ and the like.

m_lars

Posted 08 June 2006 at 05:10 pm

Well, Cynthia, I’m sure you’re not surprised that it is incumbent upon me to disagree yet again. You are correct that Henry Ford could not have built a 2006 Model-T–in 1908. The very fact that Henry Ford was obviously an intelligent designer suffiently establishes the case for intelligent design. Had Ford been able to develop his body of knowledge and experience until now, he very likely would be able to far surpass any car on the market today. All the while he would have been using his *intelligence* to determine which things worked or did not work. He would then use his *intelligence* to *design* an improvement. Had he left the car to it’s own devices, would it have improved on its own? Does your car do that? Does anything? Evolution has no designer; no designer means no design. This is as basic as math gets.

Um, I think you’re both missing the point and using an absolutely terrible metaphor – cars aren’t self replicating, do not mutate, and do not have to respond to environmental pressures. Therefore, they must be designed. Life, however, does do all of these things, and therefore does not necessarily need to be designed in order to work.

And, also, let me put something to rest that has been bugging me throughout this discussion: the second law of thermodynamics was, from the creationist viewpoint, violated when the Earth formed, the sun formed, and when galaxies formed. Oh, wait, that’s right, God did it all, so never mind. Your claims based upon thermodynamics come from nothing more than misconceptions about how thermodynamics works. Sure, the entropy cannot decrease in a closed system, but the Earth is anything but. See that bright thing in the sky? It gives us all the energy we could ever need, and therefore the Earth as a whole is not subject to the second law of thermodynamics.

Oh, and Shandooga, I think you’re mixing together abiogenesis and evolution to begin with. I also don’t think that you’ve (or any of you) have ever answered wh44’s question throughout this discussion. What would you like to see in order to “prove” evolution? I’ll give you the answer right now: for you, nothing will ever prove it. No scientific theory in history has provided so much evidence yet been so controversial. The reason why? It supposedly flies in the face of something “deeper” than science. No, Shandooga, belief in the scientific method does not negate belief in God, and it is a very dangerous thing that some people believe this. You’ve got blinders on; you’re only seeing what you want to see and ignoring the rest. That is why you will never accept “proof” of evolution. And btw, dropping “string theory” into your response doesn’t make you legitimate.

HiEv

Posted 08 June 2006 at 05:19 pm

Shandooga, you’re basically making the “watchmaker analogy” with the cars, and frankly speaking, the “watchmaker” argument is a tautology.

Think about it this way, there is no mechanism whereby a watch could form naturally, therefore it must have a creator. Right? But when one attempts to apply the analogy to biology it fails because there *is* a mechanism for organisms to appear naturally and it’s called evolution.

However, the watchmaker argument assumes that there isn’t or can’t be such a mechanism for producing complex organisms, thereby “proving” that there isn’t/can’t be a mechanism. It then argues from ignorance that since evolution isn’t possible that God *cough* I mean an “intelligent designer” must have done it. After all, once you’ve ruled out evolution, only the Judeo-Christian God is left, right? ;-)

In other words, the “watchmaker” argument has the built in assumption that life cannot evolve to its present complexity/occur naturally, and then uses that assumption to “prove” that life cannot evolve to its present complexity/occur naturally. That is a tautology.

The argument also ignores the fact that complex organisms come into being all the time without needing an “intelligent designer” to personally make each one. Organisms can produce other organisms and pass on genetic information, but watches cannot produce other watches nor do they have any kind of genetic information, and until they do, the “watchmaker analogy” is comparing apples to oranges.

Shandooga

Posted 08 June 2006 at 06:23 pm

Bon Voyage, HiEv and Cynthia. Have a nice trip.

just_dave

Posted 08 June 2006 at 10:25 pm

Regarding the question of proving or disproving evolution, what I would look for is something more than the conjecture I’ve already seen regarding this fossil preceding that fossil and on and on, ad nauseum. Show me, specifically, in the fossil record, how one flightless, featherless species of creature mutated, however minutely or majorly, superceded its predecessors, lived on and eventually produced another minutely or majorly mutated specimen that again superceded its predecessors, lived on and… (repeat as many times as necessary) produced a mutated specimen that was able to fly. I would argue that that sort of progression simply cannot happen, no matter how much time you give it.

All of the evolutionists in this forum seem to agree that microevolution plus lots of time equals macroevolution. That’s like saying, because I can walk from one end of my house to another — given enough time — I can walk to the moon. Neither can happen; there is simply too great a gulf to cross.

IF evolution is the true explanation behind what you folks call the “evidence in the fossil record” then God is definitely behind every step in your evolutionary chain, manipulating the resulting critter to be something totally different than mama and papa. Beneficial mutations on the scale that is required for the theory of evolution to be true just do not happen on their own.

HiEV: So you don’t like the watchmaker analogy; what if instead of a watch on a heath, you found a sentient machine rummelling around in a junkyard, and that machine was able to procreate on its own using spare parts from the junkyard? Would you assume that this machine was a product of some blind forces of nature, or the product of an intelligent designer? Even if that machine were the umpteenth iteration of sentient, autonomous, self-replicating machines, the original didn’t likely happen as a result of a tornado whipping through said junkyard.

HiEV once said: “Science has always been about generating hypotheses and testing them.”

Great that you have such a high view of science. But last I checked, “science” was run by scientists, most of whom put their pants on just like me (that means they are mere fallible humans) and many of whom have a bone to pick with organized religion or with the concept of God. You cannot tell me that the motives of the entire scientific community are entirely pure, nor that the scientific community is without peer pressure; pressure to conform. And when the party line is evolution, you either toe the line or you don’t get tenure, you don’t get published, you don’t get the grants, etc… no matter how good the science behind your research is. Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen; I’ve seen it first hand on many occasions with many extremely talented scientists.

You know, I’ve never really banged my head against a wall, but after reading through this and responding a few times, I think I know what it probably feels like.

Cynthia Wood

Posted 08 June 2006 at 11:21 pm

just_dave – you’re confusing evolution and abiogenesis again. Evolutionary theory has nothing whatever to say about how the first reproducing being came about. If you showed me a sentient robot rambling around a planetary junkyard, with billions of other, differing types of reproducing robots, and gave me evidence that there had been variant varieties of robots on that planet for billions of years? Sure, I would be perfectly willing to entertain the hypothesis that they had all grown from a single self-replicating robot. Where that initial robot came from would be a different question.

just_dave said:
All of the evolutionists in this forum seem to agree that microevolution plus lots of time equals macroevolution. That’s like saying, because I can walk from one end of my house to another — given enough time — I can walk to the moon. Neither can happen; there is simply too great a gulf to cross.

Except that given the sheer amount of time we’re talking about, I would view the gulf as more analagous to walking to Beijing from Paris. Sure it’s a tremendous trip, but there’s nothing I see in it that would render it impossible.

To respond to your last paragraph – yes, science is run by scientists, and scientists are human. Part of the whole reason for the scientific method is to compensate for the irrationality of humans, and to try to produce reasonably rational explanations despite it. Are some scientists unfairly lambasted for having unpopular beliefs? Of course – it’s human nature, and it happens all the time, and in every field. Nonetheless the scientific method has proved sound in the long run. The evidence will out eventually. The earth goes round the sun, even when the hypothesis is suppressed, and sooner or later science accepts the idea. Evolutionary theory has been around for over a hundred years, and creationism was the order of the day when it came in to being. Scientists pushing for evolutionary theory lost jobs and had their careers stifled. Evolution won over the scientific community on the evidence, and also because it produced testable hypotheses and predictions. I have yet to see an ID hypotheses that provides testable predictions other than “current evolutionary theory doesn’t explain everything!” Sorry – Newton’s Theory of Gravity was wrong – but Gravity, the phenomenon, was true. I have yet to see anything that would give me a moment’s pause about saying the identical phrase about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

HiEv

Posted 09 June 2006 at 11:37 am

just_dave said: “Regarding the question of proving or disproving evolution, what I would look for is something more than the conjecture I’ve already seen regarding this fossil preceding that fossil and on and on, ad nauseum.”

But there already is far more than conjecture on fossils supporting evolution. The fact that Darwin’s theories were not based on fossils, but on living species, is proof of that.

For example, one can look at species that still exist and compare their DNA, and one will reliably see that the more recently two species split based on the fossil record, the more similar their DNA will be. This is predicted by the theory of evolution and has been confirmed repeatedly. In fact, there are genetic markers that can be used to determine how long ago two species diverged, and the comparison of those markers and the fossil record rather consistently match across a variety of species. Those are just two example where “conjecture” is supported by concrete evidence.

If you are against things that are based on conjecture then you should be against creationism, which is entirely based on conjecture, and not on any objective evidence.

just_dave said: “Show me, specifically, in the fossil record, how one flightless, featherless species of creature mutated, however minutely or majorly, superceded its predecessors, lived on and eventually produced another minutely or majorly mutated specimen that again superceded its predecessors, lived on and… (repeat as many times as necessary) produced a mutated specimen that was able to fly. I would argue that that sort of progression simply cannot happen, no matter how much time you give it.”

But by saying “that sort of progression simply cannot happen” you are using your conclusion as a reason to accept your conclusion. Why do you say that it cannot happen?

Perhaps you think it requires for too many steps to occur at the same time? That would assume that none of the steps had any other advantages that were lated co-opted for flight. For example, it is know that several dinosaurs existed that had feathers on their limbs, but could not have been capable of flight. However, feathers are better insulators than scales, so it is possible that they evolved for warmth. It may have also evolved for mating purposes. Only later were feathers used for flight.

Researchers have even found some of the specific genes that change scales into feathers, and they’re mainly controlled by only three genes. See here:

Are you aware of any of this evidence supporting the evolution of birds from reptiles? If not, how can you say that it is impossible? Remember, evolution is not supported by fossils alone.

The evidence, including the physical, mental, and genetic similarities between reptiles and birds plus the fossil record, is best explained by evolution. What other scientific explanation is there that better explains all of these facts?

just_dave said: “All of the evolutionists in this forum seem to agree that microevolution plus lots of time equals macroevolution. That’s like saying, because I can walk from one end of my house to another — given enough time — I can walk to the moon. Neither can happen; there is simply too great a gulf to cross.”

Where is your evidence that it is “simply too great a gulf to cross”? You have to remember that life has been evolving on this planet for over 3.5 billion years now and that all sorts of life forms have been evolving simultaneously. If you and trillions of others had 3.5 billion years to work on it I daresay you could come up with a way to build a bridge to the moon and walk there.

When you have such large stretches of time, with so many different routes being “tested” by all sorts of species all at the same time, over an area the size of the Earth’s surface, that “gulf” suddenly gets rather tiny.

just_dave said: “IF evolution is the true explanation behind what you folks call the “evidence in the fossil record” then God is definitely behind every step in your evolutionary chain, manipulating the resulting critter to be something totally different than mama and papa.”

Such a claim is purely conjecture based on your untestable presuppositions. Why should others accept your conjecture that God is behind evolution, when the evolution and natural selection is a far simpler explanation? All you’re really doing is explaining one “mystery” (to you) with an even bigger mystery. Occam’s razor and the lack of evidence supporting your hypothesis suggest that evolution is the logical choice, not deity powered intelligent design.

Besides, if a deity is driving evolution, then why are there so many design flaws? For example, why do people get autoimmune diseases where their body is attacked by their own immune system? What kind of cruel creator would make such a thing possible? On the other hand, this is explained by evolution because the system is designed by natural selection, and events that happen rarely are harder to evolve out of.

just_dave said: “Beneficial mutations on the scale that is required for the theory of evolution to be true just do not happen on their own.”

Actually, they do. Remember, we’re talking about many mutations occurring across many individuals over billions of years here. Even if the odds are extremely slim that it will happen to any one individual, when you multiply that by enough members of that species over enough years the odds increase to the point where it actually becomes probable.

For example, if you have a beneficial mutation that has a 0.00001% chance of happening (1 million to 1 odds) to a particular species of beetle, and an average of 1,000 members of that species per generation, and a new generation every year, then it will only take 5,000 years for you to reach the point where it is 50% likely that it will have appeared at some point. FYI- 5,000 years is an eye-blink in evolutionary terms. Also keep in mind that if there were 99 other beneficial mutations that occur at that same frequency then it’s likely that 50 of those beneficial mutations would have occurred at some point during that 5,000 year period.

Do you begin to see where this is going? Tons of possibilities over huge spans of time make improbable individual events probable. Your argument is like saying that you have a 2 million to one shot of winning the lottery, therefore nobody can ever win lotteries. If that’s what you think then I recommend you read your newspaper.

just_dave said: “HiEV: So you don’t like the watchmaker analogy; what if instead of a watch on a heath, you found a sentient machine rummelling around in a junkyard, and that machine was able to procreate on its own using spare parts from the junkyard? Would you assume that this machine was a product of some blind forces of nature, or the product of an intelligent designer? Even if that machine were the umpteenth iteration of sentient, autonomous, self-replicating machines, the original didn’t likely happen as a result of a tornado whipping through said junkyard.”

As Cynthia said, you’re confusing the origin of this junkyard creature with evolution, but evolution doesn’t talk about the origins of life, only about everything that happened afterwards.

If I could see evidence of older procreating machines and evidence that this procreating machine was produced by the older machines then I wouldn’t suggest that God created this machine, I’d suggest that he came from the older machines. Even if I couldn’t figure out where the first machine came from, I wouldn’t assume that God made the first machine. So why are you doing that?

What you are arguing is a “God of the gaps” claim, where you think that science can’t explain something therefore God must be responsible. That is a poor argument because it ignores all of the other possible and more likely explanations. Even if evolution were somehow proved false tomorrow, that still wouldn’t make you right.

Still, abiogenesis, the origin of life, has explanations that don’t resort to divine intervention. I’m sure you think they are too improbable as well, but I still find them far more probable than simply saying, “God did it, now stop looking for other explanations.”

just_dave said: “Great that you have such a high view of science. But last I checked, “science” was run by scientists, most of whom put their pants on just like me (that means they are mere fallible humans)”

That’s why science requires peer review, objective evidence, independent verification, and other mechanisms that help weed out errors. Yes, by definition science is run by scientists, but simply look around and you can see that their method has led to more advancement in the understanding of our world than anything prior to it.

Are scientists perfect? Of course not, but nobody was claiming that they were. It is the method that provides that accuracy, as it helps detect and remove the errors that people commonly make. Science may not be perfect, but it’s the best thing we’ve got for figuring out how the world works.

just_dave said: “and many of whom have a bone to pick with organized religion or with the concept of God. You cannot tell me that the motives of the entire scientific community are entirely pure, nor that the scientific community is without peer pressure; pressure to conform. And when the party line is evolution, you either toe the line or you don’t get tenure, you don’t get published, you don’t get the grants, etc… no matter how good the science behind your research is. Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen; I’ve seen it first hand on many occasions with many extremely talented scientists.”

The existence of any of these things is not proof that they are wrong. If you have proof that they are wrong, provide that. All that section is are a bunch of allegations that could be leveled against almost any large group, including your own.

just_dave said: “You know, I’ve never really banged my head against a wall, but after reading through this and responding a few times, I think I know what it probably feels like.”

If you want to convince people who are not swayed by religious claims or simple insistence of impossibility then I recommend you find the best argument for your case and provide facts and evidence to support it. Note that does not mean simply posting a link to a website, but explaining the case in your own words and marshaling the facts to support it.

Hope that helps. :-)

yohn

Posted 10 June 2006 at 03:45 am

well the flu got me and i mixed up HiEv ‘s quote, What would be your standard to prove (or disprove) creationism? it’s supposed to be him stating evolution and me creationism.

yohn

Posted 10 June 2006 at 03:47 am

waiting for moderation to my main post….

wh44

Posted 10 June 2006 at 12:21 pm

just_dave said: “Regarding the question of proving or disproving evolution, what I would look for is something more than the conjecture I’ve already seen regarding this fossil preceding that fossil and on and on, ad nauseum. Show me, specifically, in the fossil record, how one flightless, featherless species of creature mutated, however minutely or majorly, superceded its predecessors, lived on and eventually produced another minutely or majorly mutated specimen that again superceded its predecessors, lived on and… (repeat as many times as necessary) produced a mutated specimen that was able to fly. I would argue that that sort of progression simply cannot happen, no matter how much time you give it.”

My guess is, you’ve heard of archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx are pretty darn close in structure to the maniraptora. How many more steps in between do you need? I don’t expect that we’ll ever get every centimeter of change inbetween – too much of the fossil record simply doesn’t exist (not every animal chooses to die in something that turns to stone), but I do expect that we’ll eventually get one or two more steps in this process.

And please don’t tell me that the archaeopteryx fossils (there are seven) are controversial – the controversy is mostly over what the evolutionary precursor to flight was (gliding or leaping), not over whether or not archaeopteryx existed. The only scientists to ever make a serious attempt at claiming they are a forgeries were an astronomer and an astrophysicist, not paleontologists – and their claims have been rebutted in detail (article entitled “Archaeopteryx Is Not a Forgery”, Science, Vol 232, 2 May, 1986, pp. 622-625).

Given this and the rest of the mountains of fossil and experimental evidence for evolution, I cannot do other than believe that evolution is about as proven as gravity. But that doesn’t stop me from believing that God made the Universe so that we would eventually come about. Why does the universe exist? That is a question no amount of science can answer.

Sapia

Posted 14 June 2006 at 10:31 pm

Its Sheri S Tepper by the way.
Is it wrong that I focused on that first thing that I opened this article.

I believe you’re referencing to her book Gate to Womens Country where they’re selectively breeding the males peacefulness. The men who aren’t of the peaceful type are kept outside the walls and practice penis-worship, and the females are inside of the towns and control the population, the food, and everything else whilst the men make wars with primitive weapons.

Its a good book

Sapia

Posted 14 June 2006 at 10:33 pm

Oh, and then there is the book which has the females breeding amongst themselves… Gibbons Decline and Fall.

me09

Posted 07 July 2006 at 07:44 pm

Shandooga said: “Just who would take out the garbage, then?”

The feminazis will.

Shandooga

Posted 21 July 2006 at 03:05 pm

Will Shandooga get the last word, even if it doesn’t mean anything?

Reilly

Posted 24 July 2006 at 09:48 pm

I can’t allow that

Scharneeigh

Posted 25 October 2006 at 09:36 pm

just_dave said: “Truly interesting that it’s a man heading up this research. Gotta be a damn interesting story behind that! Kinda reminds me of the goofball scientist in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength who wanted to eliminate all organic life because that was where all the icky stuff in nature came from.

Speaking as a man, I say just fuggedaboutit. There is a lot to be said about doing things the old fashioned way.”

Speaking as a woman, I say what’s the point? Why do we need a society that has only one sex? I mean, I’ll be a post feminist in a post patriarchal society, but why do we have to eliminate sex? What about all the straight people (straight women)out there?

qolque

Posted 29 November 2006 at 12:26 am

New to the site today (yesterday), have read a helluva lot. Found the article interesting, and the debate over evolution to be also informative. Good to read on the sites of Answers in Genesis, and also Scientific American’s 15 nonsense points of creationists. I had followed that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics reasoning myself, hadn’t seen the whole closed system limitation. Sincere thanks for aiding my understanding on that. I had also followed the complex system improbability line. Didn’t seem that nature creates highly ordered things, (hurricanes and tornados destroy) it takes mankind to build a Versailles. And serfs. Lots of serfs. However, it is only improbable, not impossible. And a living thing is a different creation altogether, not a pocketwatch (though that analogy does seem to be pleasant to accept)

And, in the baader-meinhof spirit, I found on my yahoo an Onion link which I found appropriate:

Then, I thought of that Deep Thought by Jack Handy, although I was unable to find it. It goes something like: I think that instead of getting answers to math questions, we could get “impressions”. And if someone got a different impression than someone else, so what, can’t we all be brothers?

Anyway, I’m with wh44, Evolution has convincing examples, logic, and it makes sense. It doesn’t destroy my faith in a Creator. I like Cynthia Wood’s views also. Understanding how God did it (or learning about how it was done) is a worthwhile pursuit. Scientific Method is awesome! We’ve got vaccines, we’ve got computers (made from dirt!), we’ve got landmines. Oh wait, scratch the landmines. Those aren’t good. I suppose I am the ultimate fence sitter, a Christian Atheist. Well, it isn’t due to my unwillingness to commit. I honestly don’t feel that the two schools of thought are mutually exclusive. (they may have to bend or stretch a little…)

qolque

Posted 29 November 2006 at 06:22 am

I did find another Jack Handy quote, which loosely relates. I mean, there was mentioned a certain Isaac Newton and how his time was before Darwin, so we can’t hold up his beliefs as an objective example of the way scientists thought. This might also apply to some debates, although the Hiroshima one seems to be more emotional.

“We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can’t scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.”

disasterzone

Posted 13 February 2007 at 06:47 am

Hmm…I’m not liking this. Things are fine as they are. And I’d rather not have a society of only women…I enjoy having guys around.

wargammer

Posted 05 March 2007 at 11:43 am

wh44 said: “Evolution, which provably exists at the micro level and has %&$!-loads of proof at the macro level, had hundreds of millions of years, at least, to produce this variety. Please don’t try to provoke a flame war.”

evolution is not science
it is faith.
there is zero evidence for it on the cell level
see Darwin’x Black Box

HiEv

Posted 15 March 2007 at 12:09 pm

wargammer said: “evolution is not science

it is faith.
there is zero evidence for it on the cell level
see Darwin’x Black Box”

Evolution is most definitely science, as it is a working explanation for the evidence around us. Evolution is testable and makes predictions. On the other hand, creationism does not make any predictions and is not falsifiable. Accepting creationism, based on the current lack of evidence for it, is faith and not science.

There is tons of evidence for it on the cell(ular) level. For example, one can see the commonalities in genetics across species that support it. Much of medicine, zoology, forensics, ecology, genetics, animal behavior, physiology, paleontology, and other sciences are based on evolution and work quite well.

Furthermore, “Darwin’s Black Box” is written by Michael Behe, who as I mentioned above agrees that common descent is real (including humans descending from earlier primates,) so if you hold his book up as proof for creationism I can only guess that you either didn’t read it or you didn’t pay attention to it if you did. Furthermore, his book is fraught with problems and unfounded assertions. See one of the many criticisms here:

Evolution was discovered by looking at the world around us, and is changed when new evidence comes in. It wasn’t handed down from on high, it was discovered from the ground up. You’d have to totally redefine the word “faith” for it to include something that is based on the mounds of physical evidence in the world around us.

Dropbear

Posted 17 September 2008 at 10:42 pm

I think you all are missing something terribly important here. In a strictly female society we WOULD ALL BE PMS-ing AT THE SAME TIME!!! If avoiding this means I will forever be putting the toilet seat down …. then I am willing to make that sacrifice. Besides… some boys are hot….

Avoiding the blatant female sexism in the setup to this article, the topic itself is quite interesting.
One of the major ideas dealing with the destruction of our species before global warming hit the scene was some kind of loss of our ability to reproduce. Even more recently we have gone as far as taking stem cells and artificially producing sperm from them: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5154026.stm

But rather than focusing on the sociological impacts progressions in science like this has (I mean seriously, which straight guy would say “no!” to being the sex slave to an entire female civilization? And: If god seriously disliked something that we as ‘intelligent’ beings where doing, he would go Old Testament on our asses… seriously guys he wouldn’t f-about.) I think we should all e-hi-five at the fact that advancements like this mean one up on species extinction. Go us!

johnb3491

Posted 11 April 2010 at 07:00 pm

What a yolk!

MacAvity

Posted 03 May 2010 at 07:41 pm

Damn, I love the evolution debate.

I think I can clear up one (albeit bundled) question: What is the difference between evolution and natural selection? Is there a difference? Even if there is, can there be one without the other?

According to the current theory of evolution – the one originated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace – evolution is caused by natural selection. This is the theory to which most people refer when they speak of evolution. How natural selection works has been fairly thoroughly explained, in both oversimplified and accurate-but-nearly-incomprehensibly-complicated ways, in the other posts on this page. But with all of that, evolution as independent from natural selection has not been adequately addressed.

The idea of evolution simply means that organisms change over time. What exists now is not identical to what existed six thousand years ago, and even less similar to what existed two or three billion years ago. If you believe that the world was created at 9:30 on the morning of the 23rd of October in the year 4004 BC, complete with every species and variety of animal and plant and fungus and bacterium and protozoan and what all else there is now (plus some passenger pigeons and quaggas), I can’t help you, go ahead and disbelieve evolution all you want. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to admit that the world existed on the 22nd of October, 4004 BC, and had indeed existed for a few billion years before that, you probably already believe in evolution in one form or another.

There were many evolutionary theories before Darwin’s. They all involved a belief that life on Earth has changed over time, but none until Darwin’s had anything to do with natural selection. One of the most famous was proposed by a Frenchman named Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. He said that organisms evolved by needing and using more complex body parts – the best-known example being a giraffe stretching its neck to get at higher leaves, then passing its elongated neck down to the next generation. Lamarck’s theory has since been disproven, but for its time it was highly plausible – far more plausible than, say, Charles Bonnet’s theory, which said that all life was obliterated by a disaster such as a flood every once in a while and was then spontaneously regenerated in a more complex form.

Darwin’s theory may eventually be disproven, just like Lamarck’s. This is, however, unlikely. The principle of natural selection has been witnessed in action, not giving rise to significant new species, but certainly functioning well enough to conclusively prove its existence. The theory has not been around long enough to allow people to observe large-scale evolution in action. The process is so slow that Darwin’s ideas can never be proven beyond a doubt.

Then there is always the sticky question of “how did it all start?” As to this, the current theories are much less plausible. They are only there, as someone said, to “write God out of the equation.” The Big Bang, origin of the universe, and the Primordial Soup, origin of life, are, as far as I can tell, pure speculation. I believe, firmly and informedly, in the evolutionary theory modeled on Darwin’s (his original had a few flaws, some but not all of which have been satisfactorily corrected), but I intend to reserve judgment on the various origin theories – those that involve a god and those that don’t alike – until either my mind matures enough to understand them or a better theory is put forth. I doubt that either of these events will happen in my lifetime, so I’ll probably never believe anything at all about how it all started.

I’m sorry my soul doesn’t have the faith it takes to believe in a sentient creator nudging the atoms together into proteins and nucleic acids and then nudging the proteins and nucleic acids together into a living cell, starting the snowball of evolution downhill and not interfering more than to give it a nudge in the right direction once in a while. This sounds so much more likely to me than enough lightning bolts striking the primordial soup of the ocean enough to create life by random chance, but I just can’t bring myself to accept the existence of the sentient creator. I take my hat off to those of you who have that faith.

Thank you all – all two of you – for reading my rant. In this case I think it’s excusable to have not touched upon the (extremely fascinating) topic of the original article at all (Damn Interesting, by the way! Thank you, Ms Wood!), as the comments presented such a worthy debate. I hope I’ve managed to clarify the difference between evolution and natural selection, and maybe even between understanding the theory and blindly accepting what “science” says.

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